Specific Challenge: to lay the foundations for radically new future technologies of any kind from visionary interdisciplinary collaborations that dissolve the traditional boundaries between sciences and disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities. This topic also encourages the driving role of new actors in research and innovation, including excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs and first-time participants to FET under Horizon 2020 from across Europe.

Scope: proposals are sought for cutting-edge high-risk / high-impact interdisciplinary research with all of the following essential characteristics ("FET gatekeepers"):

Radical vision: the project must address a clear and radical vision, enabled by a new technology concept that challenges current paradigms. In particular, research to advance on the roadmap of a well-established technological paradigm, even if high-risk, will not be funded.

Breakthrough technological target: the project must target a novel and ambitious science-to-technology breakthrough as a first proof of concept for its vision. In particular, blue-sky exploratory research without a clear technological objective will not be funded.

Ambitious interdisciplinary research for achieving the technological breakthrough and that opens up new areas of investigation. In particular, projects with only low-risk incremental research, even if interdisciplinary, will not be funded.

The inherently high risks of the research proposed shall be mitigated by a flexible methodology to deal with the considerable science-and-technology uncertainties and for choosing alternative directions and options.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

Scientific and technological contributions to the foundation of a new future technology

Potential for future social or economic impact or market creation.

Building leading research and innovation capacity across Europe by involvement of key actors that can make a difference in the future, for example excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs or first-time participants to FET under Horizon 20204.

Specific Challenge: to lay the foundations for radically new future technologies of any kind from visionary interdisciplinary collaborations that dissolve the traditional boundaries between sciences and disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities. This topic also encourages the driving role of new actors in research and innovation, including excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs and first-time participants to FET under Horizon 2020 from across Europe.

Scope: proposals are sought for cutting-edge high-risk / high-impact interdisciplinary research with all of the following essential characteristics ("FET gatekeepers"):

Radical vision: the project must address a clear and radical vision, enabled by a new technology concept that challenges current paradigms. In particular, research to advance on the roadmap of a well-established technological paradigm, even if high-risk, will not be funded.

Breakthrough technological target: the project must target a novel and ambitious science-to-technology breakthrough as a first proof of concept for its vision. In particular, blue-sky exploratory research without a clear technological objective will not be funded.

Ambitious interdisciplinary research for achieving the technological breakthrough and that opens up new areas of investigation. In particular, projects with only low-risk incremental research, even if interdisciplinary, will not be funded.

The inherently high risks of the research proposed shall be mitigated by a flexible methodology to deal with the considerable science-and-technology uncertainties and for choosing alternative directions and options.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

Scientific and technological contributions to the foundation of a new future technology

Potential for future social or economic impact or market creation.

Building leading research and innovation capacity across Europe by involvement of key actors that can make a difference in the future, for example excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs or first-time participants to FET under Horizon 20204.

Scope: Short individual or collaborative actions focused on the non-scientific aspects and the early stages of turning a result of an ongoing or recently finished project funded through FET under FP7 or Horizon 20206 into a genuine innovation with socio-economic impacts. The precise link with the relevant FET project and the specific result for which a FET Innovation Launchpad proposal is intended, are to be explicitly described in the proposal. This topic does not fund research or activities that are/were already foreseen in the original FET project. Activities proposed should reflect the level of maturity of the result to be taken up. They can include the definition of a commercialisation process, market and competitiveness analysis, technology assessment, verification of innovation potential, consolidation of intellectual property rights, business case development. Proposals can include activities with, for instance, partners for technology transfer, licence-takers, investors and other sources of financing, societal organisations or potential end-users. Limited low-risk technology development (for instance for demonstration, testing or minor adjustment to specific requirements) can be supported as long as it has a clear and necessary role in the broader proposed innovation strategy and plan.The Commission considers that proposals for actions no longer than 18 months and requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 0.1 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately.Expected Impact:

Scope: Short individual or collaborative actions focused on the non-scientific aspects and the early stages of turning a result of an ongoing or recently finished project funded through FET under FP7 or Horizon 20206 into a genuine innovation with socio-economic impacts. The precise link with the relevant FET project and the specific result for which a FET Innovation Launchpad proposal is intended, are to be explicitly described in the proposal. This topic does not fund research or activities that are/were already foreseen in the original FET project. Activities proposed should reflect the level of maturity of the result to be taken up. They can include the definition of a commercialisation process, market and competitiveness analysis, technology assessment, verification of innovation potential, consolidation of intellectual property rights, business case development. Proposals can include activities with, for instance, partners for technology transfer, licence-takers, investors and other sources of financing, societal organisations or potential end-users. Limited low-risk technology development (for instance for demonstration, testing or minor adjustment to specific requirements) can be supported as long as it has a clear and necessary role in the broader proposed innovation strategy and plan.The Commission considers that proposals for actions no longer than 18 months and requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 0.1 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately.Expected Impact:

Stimulating, supporting and rewarding an open and proactive mind-set towards exploitation beyond the research world.

Contributing to the competitiveness of European industry/economy by seeding future growth and the creation of jobs from FET research.

Type of Action: Coordination and support action

NMP+B << ICT

DT-ICT-07-2018-2019

Digital Manufacturing Platforms for Connected Smart Factories

d.l. 02-04-2019

Call

H2020-DT-ICT-2019Digitising and transforming European industry and services: digital innovation hubs and platforms

Orçamento

126,00 M€

Specific Challenge: Digital manufacturing platforms play an increasing role in dealing with competitive pressures and incorporating new technologies, applications and services. Advances are needed in digital manufacturing platforms that integrate different technologies, make data from the shop floor and the supply network easily accessible, and allow for complementary applications. The challenge is to fully exploit new concepts and technologies that allow manufacturing companies (especially mid-caps and SMEs) to fulfil the demands from changing supply and value networks.

Scope:

a) Innovation Action - Develop and establish platforms for the connected smart production facilities of the future including their supply chains, driven by EU actors and safeguarding European interest in an area of key importance for the European economy. Proposals need to address at least two industrial sectors with several different use cases, especially in their piloting activities. In accordance with the strategy defined in the multi-annual roadmap68 of the FoF cPPP, proposals should target at least one of the following ‘grand challenges’:

Reference implementations are preferably developed in open-source, with (as far as possible) one permissive open-source licence to be selected for all open-source components. Where applicable, APIs and SDKs are made available to third party developers to develop complementary applications.

For the Innovation Actions in this topic, the four activities and impact criteria as described in the introductory section ‘Platforms and Pilots’ have to be applied. For large-scale piloting and ecosystem building activities, proposals may involve financial support to third parties, as explained in the introductory section ‘Platforms and Pilots’, to support SMEs in piloting and developing prototype applications on top of digital manufacturing platforms.

b) Coordination and Support Activities are needed to cross-fertilise the Industrial Platform communities, allowing for easier take-up of digital technologies from ongoing and past research projects to real-world use cases, and supporting the transfer of skills and know-how between academia and industry in both directions. Coordination and Support Activities are targeted in the 2019 call.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU up to EUR 16 million for Innovation Actions and up to 2 M€ for one CSA would allow the areas to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts. At least one innovation action is supported for each ‘grand challenge’. Maximum one proposal will be selected for the CSA.

Expected Impact:

- Significant increase in the options for SMEs and mid-caps to integrate different technologies, unlock the value of their data, deploy complementary applications, and to become a more responsive link in changing supply and value networks.

Specific Challenge: Photonics is driving innovation in many different application areas. The challenge is to help European companies become more competitive by improving their business/production processes as well as products and services by means of photonics technology. The aim is to accelerate the design, development and uptake of photonics technology, by a wide range of industrial players, in particular SMEs by providing low-barrier access to volume production of advanced photonics components available to a wide range of industrial players, in particular SMEs which would otherwise not have easy access. Photonics Manufacturing Pilot Lines should form the basis for future Photonics Digital Innovation Hubs.

Scope: The focus is on Manufacturing Pilot Lines: actions should provide open access to manufacturing of advanced photonics components and systems and offer related services including design and characterization. They should cover all stages of manufacturing through to testing, provide a low entry barrier access to low and medium production volumes and the processes used should be scalable to high production volumes. Actions should include a validation of the pilot line offer with involvement of externals users in pre-commercial production runs. Activities should aim at long-term sustainability, including development of or integration into photonics innovation hubs.

Actions should make use of existing infrastructure and develop close links with on-going European and national initiatives in order to maximise impact. Proposals must present industrially relevant business cases for the manufacturing pilot line, a plan for long-term sustainability and a credible strategy for future high volume production in Europe at competitive cost.

At least one proposal will be selected to cover each of these technologies. The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between EUR 8 and 15 million would allow these to be addressed appropriately. Nevertheless this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact: Proposals should describe how the proposed work will contribute to the listed corresponding expected impacts and include baseline, targets and metrics to measure impact.

- Improve significantly the uptake of photonics technology by end-user industry, in particular SMEs, enabling a demonstrably more competitive European industry.

Specific Challenge: The challenge is to maintain Europe's position at the forefront of advanced nanoelectronic technologies developments. This is essential to ensure strategic electronic design and manufacturing capability in Europe avoiding critical dependencies from other regions. Advanced nanoelectronics technologies enable innovative solutions to industrial and societal challenges.

Scope: Projects will aim at demonstrating the viability of new approaches to computing components. The focus should be on demonstrating new concepts at transistor or circuit level which bring the potential of highly improved performance for generic or specific applications. This can be based on materials, computing unit architecture (transistor or beyond) as well as at circuit level. Still the focus is on devices and components, as well as related processing technologies.

The concept validation should be addressed in a controlled environment at a limited scale (laboratory, research line) amenable to transfer to larger scale developments in industrial environments (pilot lines, etc.).

Innovative concepts include, but are not limited to, the design, processing and integration of devices based on new approaches, e.g. spintronics, neuromorphic, resulting in computing devices and circuits. Proposals are expected to prove the industrial relevance of the intended approach.

- Energy-efficient computation circuit architectures. These can be based on the devices above but approaches based on neuromorphic computing or other hardware implementation are relevant.

- Specific technological developments may include (i) promising approaches for 3D stacks, both sequential and monolithic to address challenges of compactness, heat dissipation, reduced interconnect length, and (ii) development of cryogenic electronics to support advances in applications to computing (superconducting, quantum computing) or constraints faced in space. The aim is the demonstration of functionality at circuit level by integrating the adequate functional blocks.

- Design for advanced nanoelectronics technologies. Focus will be on design-technology solutions for energy efficiency, high reliability and robustness. All above topics can be addressed as well as the issues related to improving the devices and circuits in the advanced technology nodes.

The proposed demonstrations are expected to be validated in laboratory (TRL 4).

Proposal are also expected to specify the road to industrialisation and establish links to applications likely to benefit from the development.

In line with the strategy for EU international cooperation in research and innovation (COM(2012)497), international cooperation is encouraged, in particular with countries that have substantial research in the area (e.g. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the USA).

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 2 and 4 million would allow this area to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact: Proposals should address one or more of the following impact criteria and provide metrics to measure and monitor success.

- Identify applications likely to benefit from the intended approach with indication of key parameters (power, energy-efficiency, size, frequency, and cost) and quantitative targets to be achieved (figures of merit).

- Contribute to the mid-term viability of the European Nanoelectronics industry ensuring that new technologies with high potential for computing emerge in time to be taken up by industry.

- Sustain the technological integration requirements by focussing on challenging 3D integration issues as well as for electronics at cryogenic temperature.

- Contribute to the European industry capability to design advanced circuits for its needs.

Specific Challenge: As addressed in the multi-annual roadmap7 of the FoF cPPP, physically-entangled systems used in manufacturing environments have some specific requirements in terms of reliability and security, which are now challenged by the need for manufacturing facilities to be digitally connected with external partners in the value chain. While free flow of data is a primary requirement for digitisation of industry, it poses significant challenges in terms of data security, which cannot be solved easily because the factory of the future must exchange digital information with the outside world just like raw materials and components. There is a need to develop practically usable solutions which can guarantee an adequate level of security without limiting the capability to exchange data and information both on the manufacturing floor and beyond the factory.

Scope: Proposals need to develop tools and services guaranteeing an adequate level of data security for digital collaboration between manufacturing environments and value chains. Solutions need to be practically usable in real manufacturing facilities, taking into account the operational requirements needed for factory usage in real-world conditions, including reliability and resilience. Issues of threat detection and implementation of countermeasures should be addressed, as well as evolution and real-time response when needed. Semi-autonomous or fully autonomous solutions, requiring little or no local supervision are encouraged.

Proposals will target TRL 5 to 7, and will include at least one use case which will demonstrate measurable and significant improvements over state of the art tools and methods under real-world conditions. The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 4 and 6 million would allow this area to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact: Take-up by industry of practically usable solutions which guarantee significantly increased cyber-security levels in daily operations for manufacturing facilities and other actors in the value chains.

Specific Challenge: While robots originated in large-scale mass manufacturing, they are now spreading to more and more application areas. In these new settings, robots are often faced with new technical and non-technical challenges. The purpose of this topic is to address such issues in a modular and open way, and reduce the barriers that prevent a more widespread adoption of robots. Four Priority Areas (PAs) are targeted: healthcare, inspection and maintenance of infrastructure, agri-food, and agile production.

User needs, ethical, legal, societal and economic aspects should be addressed in order to raise awareness and take-up by citizens and businesses. Privacy and cybersecurity issues, including security by design and data integrity should also be addressed, where appropriate.

Innovative approaches to hard research problems in relation to applications of robotics in promising new areas are particularly encouraged. Proposals are expected to enable substantially improved solutions to challenging technical issues, with a view of take-up in applications with high socio-economic impact. Driven by application needs, the work can start from research at low TRL, but proposals are expected to validate their results in realistic environments in order to demonstrate the potential for take-up in the selected application(s).

The call is open to all robotics-related research topics and to all new application areas. Excluded are the four priority areas which are already covered elsewhere in this work programme: healthcare, inspection and maintenance of infrastructure, agri-food and agile production. Proposals will be expected to plan efforts to connect and cooperate with the DIHs, Platforms and other relevant activities of this work programme, as appropriate.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between €3 million and €5 million would allow this area to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Establish large-scale pilots capable of demonstrating the use of robotics at scale in actual or highly realistic operating environments; showcase advanced prototype applications built around platforms operating in real or near-real environments and demonstrate high levels of socio-economic impact.

Through large-scale pilots, proposals are expected to make a significant step forward in platform development in the area of infrastructure inspection and maintenance. Starting from suitable reference architectures, platform interfaces are defined, tested via piloting, and supported via ecosystem building preparing their roll-out, and are being evolved over time into standards.

Each proposal is expected to establish large scale pilots. They are expected to: consider utilising existing infrastructure and links to other European, national or private funding-sources; identify the long-term sustainability of the pilot; develop scalable technical solutions capable of meeting performance targets; develop metrics and performance measures for the pilot; engage relevant industry stakeholders, including SMEs, in the provision and operation of the pilot. Proposals will be expected to dedicate resources to disseminate best practice and coordinate access to platforms and demonstrators, in particular in connecting with the Robotics DIHs and Core Technologies actions and other relevant activities, in H2020 and beyond.

Pilots are expected to address both technical and non-technical issues, such as socio-economic impact, novel business models, legal and regulatory, ethical and cyber-security issues and connections to Big Data and IoT.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between €7 million and €9 million would allow this area to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

c) Robotics Competitions

Competitions aims at reducing technical and commercial risks by allowing commercial and technical performance data to be gathered and assessed. They provide a real or near-real operating environment for long-term trials and the testing of deployment strategies.

Proposals (CSA) should address the delivery of challenge-led, robotics competitions focusing on the four application areas prioritised: Healthcare, Infrastructure Inspection and Maintenance, Agri-Food, and Agile Production. Besides the technological objectives, proposals are also expected to stimulate public engagement and engage with the Robotics DIHs. Proposals should address all aspects of running competitions as public events, and engage with the media and public. Proposals should seek to mobilise external partners in sponsoring and setting up the competitions.

Expected Impact: a)

- Strengthening European excellence in Robotics S&T

- Boosting the use of robotics in promising application areas

- Opening up new markets for robotics

- Lowering barriers in the deployment of robotics-based solutions.

b)

- Demonstration of the potential for robotics to impact at scale in the chosen application areas prioritised in this call (infrastructure inspection and maintenance).

- Reduction of technical and commercial risk in the deployment of services based on robotic actors within the selected application area.

- Greater understanding from the application stakeholders of the potential for deploying robotics.

- Demonstration of platforms operating over extended time periods in near realistic environments and promotion of their use.

- Develop the eco-system around the prioritised application areas to stimulate deployment.

- Contribution to the development of open, industry-led or de facto standards

c)

- Greater public exposure to actual robotics capability.

- Greater engagement with competitions from commercial organisations in the four prioritised application areas: Healthcare, Infrastructure Inspection and Maintenance, Agri-Food and Agile Production.

Type of Action: Coordination and support action, Research and Innovation action, Innovation action

ICT << FET

FETHPC-02-2019

Extreme scale computing technologies, methods and algorithms for key applications and support to the HPC ecosystem

Specific Challenge: To develop world-class extreme scale, power-efficient and highly resilient High Performance Computing and data technologies, and to provide support for a sustainable exascale HPC ecosystem in Europe, enabling collaborations among the relevant stakeholders.

Scope: A. Research and Innovation Actions

Proposals should address the development of extreme scale computing technologies, methods and algorithms through a strong co-design approach driven by ambitious extreme computing and data applications and in close cooperation with the scientific disciplines and stakeholders concerned.The designs of the technology should respond to critical demands of performance, energy efficiency, scale, resilience, programmability, dynamic workflows etc. Proposals should describe clear metrics and targets when addressing these demands, quantify progress with respect to the state-of-the-art, and address the research challenges with a holistic view and their impact on the whole computational process including data movement and storage.Proposals should clearly articulate how research will have a significant impact in enabling ambitious extreme-scale scientific and engineering applications.

Where relevant, proposals should also provide a path towards long-term standardisation of the technologies (e.g. system software architecture, programming models, APIs, etc).

Proposals should clearly identify and address at least one of the following areas:a. System software and management, addressing adaptive and dynamic scheduling; heterogeneity of system components; efficient data access, transfers and communication, novel execution models for emerging HPC and High Performance Data Analytics (HPDA) usages, etc.b. Programming environments, reducing programming complexity and increasing scalability through advancements throughout the programming model and system software stack, and addressing code maintainability and functional portability across existing and future architectures and systems. Interoperability throughout the programming environment should be addressed.c. I/O and storage environment for data-centric extreme scale computing addressing overall system performance predictability, feature-rich and flexible data access and storage system API’s, backup and retrieval of extreme volumes of data and systems operation in virtualised operating environment.d. Data-intensive supercomputing and emerging HPC use modes addressing efficient implementation of established Big Data software frameworks and workloads on extreme-scale HPC systems, including the integration of Big Data and HPC programming models; algorithmic research addressing Machine Learning on HPC systems; interactive use of HPC resources for real time data analysis.e. Mathematical methods and algorithms for extreme scalability of computing and data with impact in system energy reduction and resilience, and addressing the usability and the efficient implementation on different HPC architectures. Work should link to HPC and extreme scale data architectures and technologies as well as to relevant applications (e.g. challenges identified by the European Centres of Excellence on HPC).

The Commission considers that proposals for Research and Innovation Actions requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 5 and 10 million and a duration of 3 years would allow this area to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts and duration.

Note that special Grant Conditions will apply for projects granted under this topic. Please see under Call Conditions.

B. Coordination and Support Action

To boost a sustainable European HPC ecosystem by providing activities to structure the community, to promote collaborations and synergies among Horizon 2020 HPC projects, Centres of Excellence on HPC (CoEs), Extreme scale Demonstrators (EsD), to create links with Big Data related activities, and to follow up and cooperate with other relevant international HPC activities. A specific focus will be given to the convergence of HPC and HPDA (High Performance Data Analytics). Activities should also address the following:

coordinate the European HPC strategy, and monitor and measure its implementation,

produce roadmaps for HPC technology and applications, covering also the post-exascale, and evaluate them through impact monitoring

promote the European strategy and the results of the European HPC ecosystem (including at international level), engage with HPC users and foster industry take-up

build and maintain relations with other relevant international HPC activities

support the generation of young talent.

This coordination and support action should be driven by the relevant actors in the HPC field. It is expected that only one proposal will be selected.

The Commission considers that proposals for Coordination and Support Actions requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 4 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact: A. Research and Innovation Actions

Contribution to the realisation of the ETP4HPC Strategic Research Agenda

Addressing important segments of the broader and/or emerging HPC markets, especially extreme-computing, emerging use modes and extreme-data HPC systems, and addressing where relevant the path to industrialisation of results

Strengthening competitiveness and leadership of European industry & science, in particular of European technology supply

European excellence in mathematics and algorithms for extreme scale HPC systems and applications working with extreme scale data

Impact on key scientific or industrial applications with relevance to societal challenges

B. Coordination and Support Action

strengthening the European research and industrial leadership in the supply, operation and use of HPC and HPDA systems

contribution to the realisation of the ETP4HPC Strategic Research Agenda

structuring the efforts of stakeholders for implementing the European HPC strategy

reinforced cooperation in international endeavours on HPC

Type of Action: Coordination and support action, Research and Innovation action

Specific Challenge: to lay the foundations for radically new future technologies of any kind from visionary interdisciplinary collaborations that dissolve the traditional boundaries between sciences and disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities. This topic also encourages the driving role of new actors in research and innovation, including excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs and first-time participants to FET under Horizon 2020 from across Europe.

Scope: proposals are sought for cutting-edge high-risk / high-impact interdisciplinary research with all of the following essential characteristics ("FET gatekeepers"):

Radical vision: the project must address a clear and radical vision, enabled by a new technology concept that challenges current paradigms. In particular, research to advance on the roadmap of a well-established technological paradigm, even if high-risk, will not be funded.

Breakthrough technological target: the project must target a novel and ambitious science-to-technology breakthrough as a first proof of concept for its vision. In particular, blue-sky exploratory research without a clear technological objective will not be funded.

Ambitious interdisciplinary research for achieving the technological breakthrough and that opens up new areas of investigation. In particular, projects with only low-risk incremental research, even if interdisciplinary, will not be funded.

The inherently high risks of the research proposed shall be mitigated by a flexible methodology to deal with the considerable science-and-technology uncertainties and for choosing alternative directions and options.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

Scientific and technological contributions to the foundation of a new future technology

Potential for future social or economic impact or market creation.

Building leading research and innovation capacity across Europe by involvement of key actors that can make a difference in the future, for example excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs or first-time participants to FET under Horizon 20204.

Specific Challenge: to lay the foundations for radically new future technologies of any kind from visionary interdisciplinary collaborations that dissolve the traditional boundaries between sciences and disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities. This topic also encourages the driving role of new actors in research and innovation, including excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs and first-time participants to FET under Horizon 2020 from across Europe.

Scope: proposals are sought for cutting-edge high-risk / high-impact interdisciplinary research with all of the following essential characteristics ("FET gatekeepers"):

Radical vision: the project must address a clear and radical vision, enabled by a new technology concept that challenges current paradigms. In particular, research to advance on the roadmap of a well-established technological paradigm, even if high-risk, will not be funded.

Breakthrough technological target: the project must target a novel and ambitious science-to-technology breakthrough as a first proof of concept for its vision. In particular, blue-sky exploratory research without a clear technological objective will not be funded.

Ambitious interdisciplinary research for achieving the technological breakthrough and that opens up new areas of investigation. In particular, projects with only low-risk incremental research, even if interdisciplinary, will not be funded.

The inherently high risks of the research proposed shall be mitigated by a flexible methodology to deal with the considerable science-and-technology uncertainties and for choosing alternative directions and options.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

Scientific and technological contributions to the foundation of a new future technology

Potential for future social or economic impact or market creation.

Building leading research and innovation capacity across Europe by involvement of key actors that can make a difference in the future, for example excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs or first-time participants to FET under Horizon 20204.

Scope: Short individual or collaborative actions focused on the non-scientific aspects and the early stages of turning a result of an ongoing or recently finished project funded through FET under FP7 or Horizon 20206 into a genuine innovation with socio-economic impacts. The precise link with the relevant FET project and the specific result for which a FET Innovation Launchpad proposal is intended, are to be explicitly described in the proposal. This topic does not fund research or activities that are/were already foreseen in the original FET project. Activities proposed should reflect the level of maturity of the result to be taken up. They can include the definition of a commercialisation process, market and competitiveness analysis, technology assessment, verification of innovation potential, consolidation of intellectual property rights, business case development. Proposals can include activities with, for instance, partners for technology transfer, licence-takers, investors and other sources of financing, societal organisations or potential end-users. Limited low-risk technology development (for instance for demonstration, testing or minor adjustment to specific requirements) can be supported as long as it has a clear and necessary role in the broader proposed innovation strategy and plan.The Commission considers that proposals for actions no longer than 18 months and requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 0.1 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately.Expected Impact:

Scope: Short individual or collaborative actions focused on the non-scientific aspects and the early stages of turning a result of an ongoing or recently finished project funded through FET under FP7 or Horizon 20206 into a genuine innovation with socio-economic impacts. The precise link with the relevant FET project and the specific result for which a FET Innovation Launchpad proposal is intended, are to be explicitly described in the proposal. This topic does not fund research or activities that are/were already foreseen in the original FET project. Activities proposed should reflect the level of maturity of the result to be taken up. They can include the definition of a commercialisation process, market and competitiveness analysis, technology assessment, verification of innovation potential, consolidation of intellectual property rights, business case development. Proposals can include activities with, for instance, partners for technology transfer, licence-takers, investors and other sources of financing, societal organisations or potential end-users. Limited low-risk technology development (for instance for demonstration, testing or minor adjustment to specific requirements) can be supported as long as it has a clear and necessary role in the broader proposed innovation strategy and plan.The Commission considers that proposals for actions no longer than 18 months and requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 0.1 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately.Expected Impact:

Specific Challenge: Currently available methods and strategies for diagnosis and treatment of cancer help clinicians continuously improve quality of care and prevent cancer deaths in the population. Accurate risk assessment, availability of genetic tests, timely diagnosis and effective treatment has created the impression of cancer being a chronic disease that can be cured. However, often rather aggressive treatment, psychological stress (anxiety and depression) can cause physical and psychological problems that may cause long-term after-cure consequences such as similar or other types of cancer, other types of (chronic) diseases and affect the quality of life of a patient. Therefore, the importance of addressing and, if possible, preventing long-term effects of cancer treatment is growing. In addition to patient-reported outcomes such as functional status, symptoms intensity and frequency, multiple domains of well-being and overall satisfaction with life, the use of big data can bring valuable information for monitoring health status and quality of life after the cancer treatment. Big Data can provide new opportunities to define statistical and clinical significance, but present also challenges as it requires specific analytical approaches.

Scope: Proposals should focus and deliver on how to better acquire, manage, share, model, process and exploit big data using, if appropriate, high performance computing to effectively monitor health status of individual patients, provide overall actionable insights at the point of care and improve quality of life after the cancer treatment. Relevant solutions include for example systems for determining and monitoring (taking also in account gender differences) the combined effects of cancer treatment, environment, lifestyle and genetics on the quality of life, enabling early identification of effects that can cause development of new medical conditions and/or impair the quality of life. Proposals preferably address relevant health economic issues, use patient reported outcome and experience measures (PROMs and PREMs) and take into account the relevant social aspects of health status and quality of life after cancer treatment. Integrated solutions should include suitable approaches towards security and privacy issues.

Information can be collected from traditional sources of health data (cohorts, comprehensive electronic health records or clinical registries, incl. genetic data, validated biomarkers for remission), from new sources of health data (mobile health apps and wearables) and from sources that are usually created for other purposes such as environmental data.

It is important to assure ethical aspects of data, confidentiality, and anonymity of data transfer and engagement of those who collect / code such data in its analysis and interpretation, in order to avoid misinterpretation and inappropriate conclusions by using proper annotation methodologies of the data. Involvement of those who work within healthcare systems, patients, family and relatives, and the general public is needed.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 3 and 5 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts. Participation of SMEs is encouraged.

Expected Impact: The proposal should provide appropriate indicators to measure its progress and specific impact in the following areas:

•Mapped comprehensive big data in a reachable and manageable way by applying principles for sharing and reusability, creating a network of knowledge by linking translation tools, heterogeneous data sources and biomedical texts for monitoring health status and quality of life after the cancer treatment;

Specific Challenge: An ageing population is increasing demand-side pressures on public health and social care providers across Europe. These pressures undermine the long-term sustainability of existing models for delivering care services to the ageing population.

The challenge is to scale up outcome-based innovative digital health and care solutions across EU borders through joining up actions in procurement of innovation. Digital health and social care solutions have been tested and have demonstrated success in smaller scale settings. However, despite cooperation initiatives amongst regions through INTERREG programmes or the transfer of innovation schemes of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP on AHA) , large-scale deployment of digital health and care solutions across EU borders remains limited. There is a lack of collaborative efforts in public purchasing of innovative ICT-based solutions for active and healthy ageing and successfully engaging demand and supply sides in scaling up innovation. This is the case in particular for digital solutions integrating health, social or community care and informal care, IoT enabled independent living solutions that allow the citizens to live safely and independently at home therefore avoiding institutionalisation, or tele-care solutions and tools supporting for self-care and person-centred care. Moreover, take-up of these ICT-based solutions by both public care providers as well as people in need for care is a crucial factor in successfully alleviating the demand-side pressures on public health and care provision. Supporting the public procurement of innovation helps public authorities by aggregating demand and sharing the inherent risks associated to deploying new innovative solutions that can be integrated with existing public health and care provision systems.

Scope: This topic will contribute to the Digital Single Market Strategy priorities on digital transformation of health and care (notably to the priority on user-centred integrated care), to the Scaling-Up Strategy of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP on AHA) and will support the EIP on AHA Reference Sites contribution to the Digital Single Market Strategy, notably the priority focusing on user-centred integrated care. The actions supported will target large-scale deployment of digital health and care solutions across different regions in Europe. In line with the priority actions of the EIP on AHA Scaling-up Strategy, the scope of this PPI is to specify, purchase and deploy ICT based solutions (made up of services and ICT products to enable the provision of services) for active and healthy ageing through a common supply and demand side dialogue, which can deliver sustainable, new or improved health and care services promoting patient feedback in which public procurement approaches for innovative solutions lead to improved outcomes. Proposals should:

•Be driven by clearly identified procurement needs of the participating organisations and building on a deep understanding of the needs of the ageing population, as well as the needs of the relevant health and care providers;

•Support sustainable deployment of new or improved person-centred and outcome-based services promoting patient feedback by providers involved in the procurement of solutions for digital health and care providers, including networking of inpatient and outpatient care, nursing services and care homes;

•Contribute to the creation of scalable markets across Europe in innovative solutions for active and healthy ageing;

•Specify measures that will ensure the sustainability of solutions beyond the lifespan of the proposed project, notably taking into account levels of acceptance with users and professionals as well as health economics considerations.

•Engage public and/or private procurers from each country participating (at national, regional or local level) that have responsibilities and budget control in the relevant area of care or supply of services;

•Be based on a complete set of common specifications for end to end services;

•Contribute to the use of interoperable solutions based on open platforms and take into account existing best practices and standardisation initiatives;

•Provide robust safeguards to ensure compliance with ethical standards and privacy protections and take account of the gender dimension;

•Contribute with good outcome-based practices that are impact measured according to the MAFEIP methodology and can be made available for replication across other regions (e.g. "detailed plans" for larger scale sustainable uptake of innovative solutions for active and healthy ageing, reference material and guidelines, manuals and education materials) through the EIP on AHA innovative practices repository.

•Contribute to the development of national strategies to stimulate the procurement of digital innovation for health and care services based on the outcomes achieved at national level.

The European Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 2 and 5 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately through PPI. This does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Proposals of this topic should follow the specific requirements for innovation procurement PPI supported by Horizon 2020 grants as set out in Annex E of the WP.

Expected Impact: The proposal should provide appropriate indicators to measure its progress and specific impact in the following areas:

•Growing awareness and successful use of public procurement to boost ICT innovation applied to integrated care and active and healthy ageing, implemented across the whole chain of care ultimately benefiting the growing ageing population across Europe;

•Contribution with data and experiences to regulatory and legislative process development addressing potential barriers to procurement of innovative solutions for active and healthy ageing;

•Contribution of an open and comprehensive socio-economic evidence base for ICT investments in the field that can support the development of sustainable business models (e.g. cost-benefit analysis, increased efficiency of health and care systems, impact assessments, return on investments, quality of life improvements for users, ethics, safety gain and user satisfaction);

•Support initiatives on interoperability and standardisation that can contribute to defragmentation of the market for ICT based active and healthy ageing solutions;

•Creation of economic boundary conditions that can support long-term sustainability of health and care systems and emergence of new business models to develop ICT innovation for active and healthy ageing in Europe;

Specific Challenge: Across the European Union, medicinal products display differences in names, variations in strength or their package size. The unavailability of a specific product may also necessitate substitution in many instances, if a patient is to be timely served in a pharmacy. Moreover, due to differences in marketing authorisation procedures, not every medicinal product is available in each Member State, and it is not unusual that the same product may have different names across Member States or the same name may identify a different product in another Member State. As substitution is regularly necessary to dispense a foreign ePrescription (eDispensation), a univocal identification of medicinal products would enable and enhance the dispensation of a foreign ePrescription and would provide benefits to patient health, patient safety, pharmacovigilance and would also allow better data analysis of clinical records. Most national ePrescription and medicines databases are not currently supporting relevant identification attributes and codes. As the EU-wide implementation of ISO IDMP (identification of medicinal products) standards is currently under way by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the EU Regulatory Network to comply with the EU Pharmacovigilance legislation, this action aims at enabling and fostering the use of a common EU medicinal Product repository (ISO IDMP compliant) to fulfil the ePrescription/eDispensation in a cross-border setting use case. This will provide a univocal identification of medicinal products across Europe and potentially beyond.

Scope: This innovation action is expected to support two goals: (i) the cross-border mobility of European patients by offering safer eDispensations across borders, (ii) the implementation of the IDMP standards in Member States drug databases (including a possible linkage to the EU SPOR - Substance, Product, Organisation and Referential master data database) allowing the identification of locally available medicinal products which are equivalent to the one identified in a foreign prescription.

This requires creating an EU ePrescription/eDispensing approach to use the future EU SPOR database. A common approach and operating model needs to be developed, including common processes for validation of contents, error mitigation, linkage of the EU SPOR database with the ePrescription/eDispensing systems, updates and mappings to other systems for at least 5 Member States' organisations. Harmonisation guidelines of prescribing and dispensation practices in a cross-border setting could be a further focus.

The proposal should demonstrate its ability to:

•Define the additional quality criteria, processes, actors, risk minimisation measures and safety nets to be applied to the data coming from the EU SPOR database to ensure that the data can be safely used by the ePrescription/eDispensing systems and any harm to patient is avoided;

•Define and implement APIs or use the ones that will be provided by the SPOR system) for data retrieval/view;

•Ensure the quality of data, usability of data for national agencies, determine and support the implementation and validation of adaptations needed at national or regional levels;

•Support integration with existing cross-border ePrescription services, such as implemented under the Connecting Europe Facility ;

•Establish a Working Group of European medicinal products database producers to support the implementation of the IDMP standard;

•Raise awareness and ensure coordination of pre-competitive activities, cooperation with EMA and the EU Regulatory Network (e.g. national competent authorities), and other relevant stakeholders (producers of ePrescribing, clinical record systems);

•Raise awareness and explore benefits for both regulatory and clinical contexts, use cases for public health, big data;

•Ensure compliance with relevant EU legislation, in particular REGULATION (EU) 2016/679 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data;

•Contribute, where relevant, to the sustainability and diffusion of European eHealth services, such as implemented under the CEF.

It is expected that Members of the Consortium should include a wide range of relevant stakeholders and experts including inter alia Pharmacists, National Competent Authorities, IT Integrators, producers of ePrescribing, clinical record systems. It should demonstrate its ability to deliver large scale implementation and coordination of European projects. Participation of Industry is encouraged in the most appropriate phases of the project.

The work should also provide an assessment of impacts based on benefits and costs to be anticipated. This should include not only regulatory impact, but also impact on setting global standards and best practice, and impact on clinical data quality and interoperability along with the spill-over effects on pharmaceutical companies, data base producers and competitive advantage of European companies.

Synergies with actions and activities supported by different programmes and policy initiatives of the Commission should be encouraged and resources from previous European projects should be considered.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 5 and 8 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact: The proposal should provide appropriate indicators to measure its progress and specific impact in the following areas:

•Design and implementation of an IT solution based on the EU SPOR database to support ePrescribing/eDispensing in a cross-border setting is designed and implemented, open for integration with existing cross-border ePrescription and electronic health record services, such as under CEF or H2020

•Better address adverse events/effects and safety issues by enhanced development of standard vocabulary for the related reporting;

Specific Challenge: Senior people are statistically at greater risk of cognitive impairment, frailty and multiple chronic health conditions with consequences for their independence, their quality of life (and the one of their families) but also for the sustainability of health and social care systems. There is also increasing evidence that interactions with the environment play an important role in the evolution of the patient's health status and condition. The challenge is now to foster secure, scalable and robust digital solutions for integrated care which will:

•Promote a shift towards outcome-based delivery of integrated (health and social) care, which can be realised in a realistic operational, organisational and financial setting.

•Ensure trust of users and policy makers with regard to data access, protection and sharing.

•Design flexible but replicable solutions with a potential for financial sustainability, large scale deployment and further business and job creation opportunities.

Scope: The scope of this topic is to foster the large-scale pilots for deployment of trusted and personalised digital solutions dealing with Integrated Care, with a view to supporting and extending healthy and independent living for older individuals who are facing permanently or temporarily reduced functionality and capabilities. This in turn is expected to contribute to a patient-centred and truly individualized strategy in order to develop trusted, robust and financially sustainable services potentially useable in any Member States and the Digital Single Market, and applicable to a very wide range of patient pathways. These approaches aim to enable people to remain independent as long as possible and prevent hospitalisation.

Expected outcomes are in priority:

•Efficiency gains in terms of resource utilization and coordination of care.

•Flexibility and replicability of service delivery patterns to combine personalization and large scale adoption of services with patient and citizen feedback.

•Ensuring secure and efficient sharing and processing of all data and information involved in the supply chain at each step of data stream: access, protection, sharing, processing and storage.

•Improvement of quality of life for the patient and his/her family and also of working conditions of all health care and social care providers involved in the supply chain, taking into account multi-disciplinary environment and constraints. Working conditions of professionals should cover in priority: work time management, quality of data/information exchange and multi-disciplinary coordination.

Outcome indicators should contribute to the assessment of the action regarding trust, recruitment, added value for the patient (in terms of quality of life) and cost-efficiency altogether.

•Recruitment of professionals will be measured by the number of professionals registered as actual used compared with the number of professionals actually registered in the pilot site region.

•Quality of life should be measured on the basis of commonly used questionnaires (like SF36) but also if required on the basis of specific disease-oriented measurement tools.

•Measurement of cost-efficiency should be measured on the basis of work time information dedicated to each patient.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 4 and 6 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

•A common vision of technical prerequisites and framework to ensure users trust with regard to health and social data and information in IT supported environment, in line with existing EU data protection regulation (and if required with EU reflection on platforms).

Specific Challenge: In the past years several open service platforms for Active and Healthy Ageing domains have been developed, originating from the medical, independent living, and IoT domain. These platforms aim at building a common basis for application development, assuring interoperability at the application and service level, and reducing development cost by re-use of components. As these platforms mature more insight is needed in the way they contribute to the development of a scalable and open market for digital solutions for health and ageing, and which value is actually achieved through them. The integration of platforms between different domains will introduce new interoperability issues that need to be tackled. A coordination and support action that addresses these issues and gathers the insight referred above is needed in order to promote the effective uptake and impact of open platforms.

Scope: Proposals should deliver an inventory of the state of the art and analyse the use of open service platforms in the Active and Healthy Ageing domain, covering both open platforms -such as universAAL and FIWARE - and partly-open/proprietary platforms developed by industry. In addition, proposals should address interactions between platforms.

Proposals should elaborate a methodology that monitors open platform development, adoption and spread across Europe, with relevant KPI’s, factors that support or hinder the uptake of open platforms in Europe, including the associated evolution of the ecosystems and stakeholder networks.

Proposals are then expected to put this methodology into practice and study the use of open platforms by, amongst other possible actions, collecting and processing data from running and recently ended projects –including EU funded projects- and initiatives that use the referred platforms, with special focus on those building upon UniversAAL and FIWARE. They should also address the evolution in the further development and maintenance of the platforms as well as the use and sustainability of relevant open platforms.

Proposals should elaborate evaluation guidelines aimed at collecting evidence on socio economic costs and benefits of the use of open platforms as means for service delivery to serve as a reference for promoting further use of this approach.

Proposals are expected to include activities aimed at fostering integration efforts and knowledge exchange between the projects and initiatives referred above and also the user communities around the platforms. Proposals should collect best practices and practical experience with integrating multiple platforms. Technical, organisational, financial/business and legal aspects should be taken into account. Proposals should explore and link relevant on-going policy initiatives in the field such as the Blueprint for digital transformation of health and care .

Proposals should describe collaboration activities with other relevant European projects or initiatives, e.g. the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing. They are also expected to include dissemination activities for different stakeholder groups -technology developers, policy makers, end users-, preferably in the context of major events such as EIP-AHA summit, AAL Forum and eHealth Week.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 1.5 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact: Proposal should present appropriate indicators to measure their progress and impact in these areas:

•Identification of the critical success factors of open platform development, deployment, and spread;

•Increased knowledge on the differences and synergies between open platforms, with regard to both their features and their interoperability on different levels (data / information / applications / services);

•Evidence for the socioeconomic benefit of open service platforms;

•Engagement of required stakeholders to ensure the reliability of the data collected and to maximize the value of results achieved;

•Increased levels of participation by service platform providers and platform users in networking and knowledge exchange events;

•Contribution to the effective implementation of relevant policy initiatives in the field;

•Enhanced synergies with other European projects to make joint progress on favourable framework conditions to scaling-up digital innovation for active and healthy ageing across the EU, including standardisation.

Type of Action: Coordination and support action

ICT << Transportes

DT-ART-03-2019

Human centred design for the new driver role in highly automated vehicles

Significant research efforts are addressing driver performance and behaviour in automated driving conditions still requiring the driver to be prepared to assume control (SAE automation level 3 and lower). In highly automated driving conditions (SAE automation level 4) the role of the driver will change dramatically since driver intervention is not required during defined use cases. This means that during a single trip there will be a coexistence of different automated driving functions demanding various degrees of human attention. When a vehicle is in highly automated driving mode the driver may take on different behaviours. Solutions need to be developed and they have to ensure both a safe transfer between use cases with different automation levels and that drivers always have a very clear understanding about the degree of automation enabled in each situation.

Scope:

Proposals for research and innovation should focus on the design of safe human-machine interfaces for vehicles with highly automated driving functions and the safe and controlled transfer between use cases of different SAE automation levels (between level 4 to/from levels 3 or 2) for all types of drivers.

The proposed actions should include all of the following aspects:

•Research to characterise driver roles in SAE automation level 4 situations and for the transition between use cases with different automation levels. Upgrade of comprehensive models for driver behaviour/reaction, awareness, readiness and monitoring. Driver generational effects, considering in particular variations in IT usage experience and age, but also other cultural factors should be taken into account.

•Impact assessment methods, especially for safety aspects, based on these models. The new relationship between driver and vehicle (mutual cooperation or even handover rather than continuous control) should be reflected, also considering the variety of activities a driver may engage in while the vehicle is in charge. Use cases where an operator controls the vehicle remotely may be included.

•Develop easily understood solutions making it clear to the driver what is the operational capability (authority) of the automated mode or modes currently enabled, as well as ensuring safe and reliable function (re-)allocation and corresponding driver/operator readiness. Driver control handover, driver/operator state and impairment are among the aspects that should be considered and the intended driver reaction should be secured.

•Demonstration of concept functionality in real world situations with various use cases and driving environments where automated systems receive and give back control from/to the driver.

Proposed actions should build on the knowledge and results of ongoing projects addressing human machine interactions of automated driving systems.

In line with the Union's strategy for international cooperation in research and innovation, international cooperation is encouraged. In particular, proposals should consider cooperation with projects or partners from the US, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and/or Australia. Proposals should foresee twinning with entities participating in projects funded by US DOT to exchange knowledge and experience and exploit synergies.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between EUR 4 to 8 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

• Innovative solutions, concepts and algorithms for a safe human-machine interface of highly automated driving functions and for safe and controlled transfer between use cases of different automation levels.

•Reduction of risks for driver behaviour related incidents by ensuring that drivers/operators are adequately alerted, made aware and engaged when the highly automated vehicle encounters situations or use cases that it cannot handle and thus will turn to lower automation levels.

•The research will help achieve the European Transport White Paper "Vision Zero" objective by preventing road accidents caused by human errors. Once on the market the developed concepts and solutions will also contribute to Sustainable Development Goal 3 (Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages; in particular goal 3.6. "By 2020, halve the number of global deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents").

DT-ART-04-2019

Developing and testing shared, connected and cooperative automated vehicle fleets in urban areas for the mobility of all

Shared, connected and cooperative automated vehicles may become a game changer for urban mobility. They can provide seamless door to door mobility of people and freight delivery services, which can lead to healthier, more accessible, greener and more sustainable cities, as long as they are integrated in an effective public transport system. Since a few years the development of shared automated vehicle pilots are emerging around the world. Today, most of these pilots are small-scale and involve either on-demand ride services or low-speed shuttles operating in controlled environments. In order to accelerate the uptake of high quality and user oriented mobility services, based on shared, connected and cooperative automated vehicles, there is a need for demonstrating these services in real life conditions to test the performance, safety and viability of these systems and services and to prove that they are attractive for and accepted by users. Furthermore, the potential impacts on reducing CO2 emissions and pollutants, safety and overall transport system costs need to be assessed.

•Design innovative shared, connected, cooperative and automated vehicle concepts (road vehicles at SAE level 4 and higher) and the associated new business/operating models addressing user and customer needs, including cultural aspects, for mobility of people and/or delivery of goods. Specific user needs in different regional and operating environments and for different user groups, e.g. elderly, children and users with disabilities should be considered and attractiveness and acceptability by all users should be ensured. The potential of combining automated urban delivery and people transportation should be addressed.

•Test robustness, reliability and safety of shared highly automated vehicle fleets that are operating in semi-open or open environments focusing on the interaction with other road users, including pedestrians, cyclists and public transport systems. The fleets should consist of electrified vehicles. Synergies with advanced energy efficient, smart and multimodal mobility concepts should be actively developed. Fleet management should include operational optimisation as well as energy management. Fleet tests should consider the entire "functional urban area" and explicitly include feeder services and other collective transport options in peri-urban and low-density urban areas.

•Vehicles should use connectivity technologies to allow communication and cooperation between vehicles, infrastructure and with other road users and to enable automated, smart mobility services, innovative fleet management concepts and higher performance of automated vehicle functions. Proposals should make the best use of EGNOS and Galileo which significantly improve the vehicle positioning availability and reliability. The development of solutions for the next generation of cooperative services by efficiently combining C-ITS and automation for smart, smooth, safe and efficient traffic flows (including the development and testing of "open message definitions" for all C-ITS stakeholders) would be an asset.

•Identify and provide for the needs of vulnerable road users (including their potential re-definition to include non-connected users, out-of-position passengers in automated cars, cyclists, pedestrians, etc.) resulting from this new automated/mixed environment (use of standard & highly automated vehicles).

•Develop architecture, functional and technical requirements for ICT technologies, for secure data collection and processing needed for the operation of connected and cooperative automated vehicles. Develop ways to enhance the optimised use of big data in (road) transport for implementing smart and safe mobility solutions, innovative traveller services and (city) traffic management.

•Fulfil all security requirements to protect the shared automated vehicles to any threats and avoid any conscious manipulations of the information enabling automated driving.

In line with the Union's strategy for international cooperation in research and innovation, international cooperation is encouraged. In particular, proposals should consider cooperation with projects or partners from the US, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and/or Australia. Proposals should foresee twinning with entities participating in projects funded by US DOT to exchange knowledge and experience and exploit synergies.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between EUR 15 and 30 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

Proposals will test the overall mobility impact, in particular, how shared mobility solutions using connected and cooperative automated vehicles can contribute to a more sustainable, inclusive, and safe mobility system and help residents of a city/region (in particular less mobile persons, elderly and children) to increase mobility and improve urban freight transport efficiency. Proposed actions will help to reduce the total number of passenger cars and goods km in cities, overall CO2 and air pollutant emissions and energy consumption. They will improve market opportunities for SME's and new-entrants by addressing and developing innovative cross-sector business models. Actions will create strategic partnering opportunities between public agencies and the private sector for developing sustainable and scalable business models. They will also support the accelerated deployment of electrified vehicles for shared automated mobility services and integrated strategies for a smart and multi-modal mobility system and urban development, including land use and ITS and infrastructure development.

Merging physical transport assets like infrastructure or vehicles with the digital layer, through the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data applications opens vast possibilities in terms of the development of new transport services, business/operating models and social innovations. This has been exemplified in the rapid development of services such as multimodal travel planners, transportation network companies, Mobility as a Service, public transport on demand, new airline ancillary products, various forms of tracking and tracing and many others.

Digitally based services and applications provide citizens with an increasing level of tailored real-time information and greater choice thus allowing for a travel process that is faster, more comfortable and which gives travellers greater control. These services and applications can also serve as basis for social innovations in mobility. In the longer time frame, digitisation of transport promises to lead towards fully personalised services and commercial offers. Despite this, important and often overlooked aspects are user impact and user's ability and readiness to take advantage of the new opportunities. Benefiting from digital technology requires specific skills, willingness and ability to assume a new role as an active participant of the digital travel ecosystem. The main challenge is therefore to ensure that all members of society can benefit from digitisation. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to better understand the needs and attitudes of various users, in particular vulnerable-to-exclusion citizens such as, for example, elderly, low-income, disabled or migrants, in relation to the requirements brought about by the digitised transport system as well as the skills and strategies necessary for all citizens in order to fully benefit from it.

Scope:

Proposals should address several or all of the following:

•Identify the main characteristics of demands that digitally based mobility solutions place on the users;

•Identify the needs and attitudes of all societal strata of transport users - in particular vulnerable to exclusion citizens - in the digitised travel ecosystem, taking into account interpersonal and intrapersonal (over time for the same person) variations(age, culture, etc);

•Identify the obstacles to the appropriation of digital mobility by different user groups and possible nudges to facilitate it, including the potential for social innovations;

•Investigate user requirements when transport is interrupted, e.g.: due to extreme weather, man-made or technical hazards.

•Investigate gender related differences in the adoption of digitally based transportation products and services;

•Identify skills and strategies needed in order to fully benefit from digitalisation in transport and thus to avoid digital exclusion or digital divide in terms of social and spatial aspects;

•Analyse differences and particularities in relation to the adoption of new mobility solutions and social innovations across a representative sample of member states, both in terms of user uptake and service provision;

•Provide recommendations for policy making and practical applications for designing an inclusive digital transport system and its related products and services with due regard to data protection and cybersecurity issues;

Research should be validated in a selected number of case studies through pilot demonstration, trials and testing involving service providers and end-users. Furthermore, actions should be undertaken in view of ensuring take up of research results by key stakeholders.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 1 and 3 million each would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

Research will help policy-makers design appropriate regulatory frameworks and social and educational strategies in order to create the best possible conditions for an inclusive, user friendly digital transport system, taking into account the needs and characteristics of all parts of society, with particular attention to vulnerable to exclusion citizens. Moreover, research will also help regional authorities and businesses in designing digital transport solutions that are better tailored to citizens' individual needs.

Specific Challenge: to lay the foundations for radically new future technologies of any kind from visionary interdisciplinary collaborations that dissolve the traditional boundaries between sciences and disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities. This topic also encourages the driving role of new actors in research and innovation, including excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs and first-time participants to FET under Horizon 2020 from across Europe.

Scope: proposals are sought for cutting-edge high-risk / high-impact interdisciplinary research with all of the following essential characteristics ("FET gatekeepers"):

Radical vision: the project must address a clear and radical vision, enabled by a new technology concept that challenges current paradigms. In particular, research to advance on the roadmap of a well-established technological paradigm, even if high-risk, will not be funded.

Breakthrough technological target: the project must target a novel and ambitious science-to-technology breakthrough as a first proof of concept for its vision. In particular, blue-sky exploratory research without a clear technological objective will not be funded.

Ambitious interdisciplinary research for achieving the technological breakthrough and that opens up new areas of investigation. In particular, projects with only low-risk incremental research, even if interdisciplinary, will not be funded.

The inherently high risks of the research proposed shall be mitigated by a flexible methodology to deal with the considerable science-and-technology uncertainties and for choosing alternative directions and options.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

Scientific and technological contributions to the foundation of a new future technology

Potential for future social or economic impact or market creation.

Building leading research and innovation capacity across Europe by involvement of key actors that can make a difference in the future, for example excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs or first-time participants to FET under Horizon 20204.

Specific Challenge: to lay the foundations for radically new future technologies of any kind from visionary interdisciplinary collaborations that dissolve the traditional boundaries between sciences and disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities. This topic also encourages the driving role of new actors in research and innovation, including excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs and first-time participants to FET under Horizon 2020 from across Europe.

Scope: proposals are sought for cutting-edge high-risk / high-impact interdisciplinary research with all of the following essential characteristics ("FET gatekeepers"):

Radical vision: the project must address a clear and radical vision, enabled by a new technology concept that challenges current paradigms. In particular, research to advance on the roadmap of a well-established technological paradigm, even if high-risk, will not be funded.

Breakthrough technological target: the project must target a novel and ambitious science-to-technology breakthrough as a first proof of concept for its vision. In particular, blue-sky exploratory research without a clear technological objective will not be funded.

Ambitious interdisciplinary research for achieving the technological breakthrough and that opens up new areas of investigation. In particular, projects with only low-risk incremental research, even if interdisciplinary, will not be funded.

The inherently high risks of the research proposed shall be mitigated by a flexible methodology to deal with the considerable science-and-technology uncertainties and for choosing alternative directions and options.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

Scientific and technological contributions to the foundation of a new future technology

Potential for future social or economic impact or market creation.

Building leading research and innovation capacity across Europe by involvement of key actors that can make a difference in the future, for example excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs or first-time participants to FET under Horizon 20204.

Scope: Short individual or collaborative actions focused on the non-scientific aspects and the early stages of turning a result of an ongoing or recently finished project funded through FET under FP7 or Horizon 20206 into a genuine innovation with socio-economic impacts. The precise link with the relevant FET project and the specific result for which a FET Innovation Launchpad proposal is intended, are to be explicitly described in the proposal. This topic does not fund research or activities that are/were already foreseen in the original FET project. Activities proposed should reflect the level of maturity of the result to be taken up. They can include the definition of a commercialisation process, market and competitiveness analysis, technology assessment, verification of innovation potential, consolidation of intellectual property rights, business case development. Proposals can include activities with, for instance, partners for technology transfer, licence-takers, investors and other sources of financing, societal organisations or potential end-users. Limited low-risk technology development (for instance for demonstration, testing or minor adjustment to specific requirements) can be supported as long as it has a clear and necessary role in the broader proposed innovation strategy and plan.The Commission considers that proposals for actions no longer than 18 months and requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 0.1 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately.Expected Impact:

Scope: Short individual or collaborative actions focused on the non-scientific aspects and the early stages of turning a result of an ongoing or recently finished project funded through FET under FP7 or Horizon 20206 into a genuine innovation with socio-economic impacts. The precise link with the relevant FET project and the specific result for which a FET Innovation Launchpad proposal is intended, are to be explicitly described in the proposal. This topic does not fund research or activities that are/were already foreseen in the original FET project. Activities proposed should reflect the level of maturity of the result to be taken up. They can include the definition of a commercialisation process, market and competitiveness analysis, technology assessment, verification of innovation potential, consolidation of intellectual property rights, business case development. Proposals can include activities with, for instance, partners for technology transfer, licence-takers, investors and other sources of financing, societal organisations or potential end-users. Limited low-risk technology development (for instance for demonstration, testing or minor adjustment to specific requirements) can be supported as long as it has a clear and necessary role in the broader proposed innovation strategy and plan.The Commission considers that proposals for actions no longer than 18 months and requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 0.1 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately.Expected Impact:

Specific Challenge: Nanotechnology research has led to a remarkable development of nanoscale materials in bulk form with unique properties. Several of these materials are in the market or are expected to enter the market in the near future. The challenge is to establish industrial scale manufacturing of functional systems based on manufactured nanoparticles with designed properties for use in semiconductors, energy harvesting and storage, waste heat recovery, medicine, etc. This action will therefore establish synergy between EU stakeholders (research laboratories, industry, SMEs, etc.) active in this domain and to identify and resolve common challenges.

Scope:

 Establish a network of EU stakeholders that will manage information and communication among its members in the technical domains such as nano-synthesis, nanofabrication, nanostructuring, additive nanomanufacturing, nanostructure assembly, roll-to-roll nanofabrication, etc.;

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of around EUR 2 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

 Integrate nanoscale building blocks into complex, large scale systems that will become the basis for a new European high-value industry;

 Link and consolidate existing infrastructure, create a sustainable community of stakeholders managing information and communication within and outside the group and develop an EU wide research and innovation strategy;

 Establish a network of existing EU funded projects and initiatives, which will solve common issues through cross-project collaboration, and will strengthen technology takeup across Europe;

 Establish international cooperation in particular with the nanomanufacturing programme of USA-NSF and the NNI Signature initiative of Sustainable Nanomanufacturing.

Specific Challenge: Photonic technologies for health applications is a very promising field, where the EU has produced significant results during the past decades; however, industrialization is still lagging behind. The challenges are to develop methods that provide the clinicians with photonics enabled tools to improve or to assess the successes of therapies and to transform low TRL technologies into robust medical devices answering to clinician needs.

Photonic circuits are typically employed in combination with high performance electronics, micro-optics while the thermal management and the efficient integration of these technologies is accordingly of major importance. The challenge is to create and develop advanced techniques for intimate integration of sub-systems incorporating multiple technologies enabling application across multiple domains.

The European continuous process industries as well as the piecewise manufacturing sector are facing the continuous struggle to keep a leading role in the worldwide competition. The challenge is to deploy photonic sensor technologies for the exact monitoring of process and product parameters so as to optimize those processes, saving resources whilst guaranteeing optimum product quality.

Scope: The focus is on the following themes:

Innovation Actions

i. Photonics devices to support monitoring therapeutic progress: Actions should develop reliable (high sensitivity, specificity and accuracy), safe to operate, cost-effective and fast photonics enabled devices to support assessing the effects of treatments of major diseases like cancer (excluding skin cancer), infectious, degenerative and cardiovascular diseases, including determining individual dispositions (eg methods to assess drug resistance) and monitoring of therapy progress. The feasibility and validity of the proposed approach should already have been validated in clinical settings. A medical equipment manufacturer should drive the action, and physicians/clinicians/surgeons must be closely involved. Validation should take gender specificities into account. Small scale clinical studies should be included, but clinical trials are excluded.

ii. Sensor-Based Optimization of Production Processes: Sensor-Based Optimization of Production Processes: Actions should address prototyping, demonstration, optimization and validation in real industry settings of highly advanced smart broadband multimodal photonic sensing solutions operating in the spectral range from the ultraviolet to the far infrared, and intended for improving production process through the monitoring of relevant process and product parameters (e.g. physical, chemical, imaging, geometrical and environmental). The focus is on cost-effective process-integrated solutions that are optimized in terms of speed, quality, and resource efficiency. The solutions should also address embedded pre-processing and suitably interpreting the acquired raw data for the optimization of the processes.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between EUR 3 and 6 million would allow these themes to be addressed appropriately. Nevertheless this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Research and Innovation Actions

i. Photonics System on Chip/ System in Package for optical interconnect applications: Actions should address advanced techniques for the intimate combination of photonic integrated circuit technology with other enabling circuits, devices and mother boards to realise major advances in the capability, performance and complexity of photonic system-on-chip and system-in-package components targeting photonic interconnect applications in the network, datacentre and consumer communication space. A holistic approach from design through to test is required. The targeted component technologies need to have demonstrable performance advantages in terms of speed, energy efficiency, cost and reliability and fit in the system and network architecture roadmaps of vendors.

ii. Photonics systems for advanced imaging to support diagnostics driven therapy: Actions should research ground-breaking, reliable (high sensitivity, specificity and accuracy), safe to operate, cost-effective and fast photonics enabled imaging system to support diagnostics during intervention and treatments of major diseases like cancer (excluding skin cancer), infectious, degenerative and cardiovascular diseases. Physicians/clinicians/surgeons and a medical equipment manufacturer must be closely involved from requirement specifications to validation in clinical settings. Validation should take gender specificities into account. Clinical trials are excluded.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between EUR 3 and 6 million would allow these themes to be addressed appropriately. Nevertheless this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Coordination and Support Actions

i. Fostering careers in photonics: Actions should reach out to STEM graduates/PhD students and young postdocs in order to encourage more of them to pursue a career in photonics. Actions should help make students more industry ready and should provide the appropriate training, encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. Gender issues must also be addressed.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between EUR 1 and 1.5 million (for theme i) would allow this to be addressed appropriately. Nevertheless this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact: Proposals should describe how the proposed work will contribute to the listed corresponding expected impacts and include baseline, targets and metrics to measure impact.

Specific Challenge: While robots originated in large-scale mass manufacturing, they are now spreading to more and more application areas. In these new settings, robots are often faced with new technical and non-technical challenges. The purpose of this topic is to address such issues in a modular and open way, and reduce the barriers that prevent a more widespread adoption of robots. Four Priority Areas (PAs) are targeted: healthcare, inspection and maintenance of infrastructure, agri-food, and agile production.

User needs, ethical, legal, societal and economic aspects should be addressed in order to raise awareness and take-up by citizens and businesses. Privacy and cybersecurity issues, including security by design and data integrity should also be addressed, where appropriate.

Innovative approaches to hard research problems in relation to applications of robotics in promising new areas are particularly encouraged. Proposals are expected to enable substantially improved solutions to challenging technical issues, with a view of take-up in applications with high socio-economic impact. Driven by application needs, the work can start from research at low TRL, but proposals are expected to validate their results in realistic environments in order to demonstrate the potential for take-up in the selected application(s).

The call is open to all robotics-related research topics and to all new application areas. Excluded are the four priority areas which are already covered elsewhere in this work programme: healthcare, inspection and maintenance of infrastructure, agri-food and agile production. Proposals will be expected to plan efforts to connect and cooperate with the DIHs, Platforms and other relevant activities of this work programme, as appropriate.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between €3 million and €5 million would allow this area to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Establish large-scale pilots capable of demonstrating the use of robotics at scale in actual or highly realistic operating environments; showcase advanced prototype applications built around platforms operating in real or near-real environments and demonstrate high levels of socio-economic impact.

Through large-scale pilots, proposals are expected to make a significant step forward in platform development in the area of infrastructure inspection and maintenance. Starting from suitable reference architectures, platform interfaces are defined, tested via piloting, and supported via ecosystem building preparing their roll-out, and are being evolved over time into standards.

Each proposal is expected to establish large scale pilots. They are expected to: consider utilising existing infrastructure and links to other European, national or private funding-sources; identify the long-term sustainability of the pilot; develop scalable technical solutions capable of meeting performance targets; develop metrics and performance measures for the pilot; engage relevant industry stakeholders, including SMEs, in the provision and operation of the pilot. Proposals will be expected to dedicate resources to disseminate best practice and coordinate access to platforms and demonstrators, in particular in connecting with the Robotics DIHs and Core Technologies actions and other relevant activities, in H2020 and beyond.

Pilots are expected to address both technical and non-technical issues, such as socio-economic impact, novel business models, legal and regulatory, ethical and cyber-security issues and connections to Big Data and IoT.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between €7 million and €9 million would allow this area to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

c) Robotics Competitions

Competitions aims at reducing technical and commercial risks by allowing commercial and technical performance data to be gathered and assessed. They provide a real or near-real operating environment for long-term trials and the testing of deployment strategies.

Proposals (CSA) should address the delivery of challenge-led, robotics competitions focusing on the four application areas prioritised: Healthcare, Infrastructure Inspection and Maintenance, Agri-Food, and Agile Production. Besides the technological objectives, proposals are also expected to stimulate public engagement and engage with the Robotics DIHs. Proposals should address all aspects of running competitions as public events, and engage with the media and public. Proposals should seek to mobilise external partners in sponsoring and setting up the competitions.

Expected Impact: a)

- Strengthening European excellence in Robotics S&T

- Boosting the use of robotics in promising application areas

- Opening up new markets for robotics

- Lowering barriers in the deployment of robotics-based solutions.

b)

- Demonstration of the potential for robotics to impact at scale in the chosen application areas prioritised in this call (infrastructure inspection and maintenance).

- Reduction of technical and commercial risk in the deployment of services based on robotic actors within the selected application area.

- Greater understanding from the application stakeholders of the potential for deploying robotics.

- Demonstration of platforms operating over extended time periods in near realistic environments and promotion of their use.

- Develop the eco-system around the prioritised application areas to stimulate deployment.

- Contribution to the development of open, industry-led or de facto standards

c)

- Greater public exposure to actual robotics capability.

- Greater engagement with competitions from commercial organisations in the four prioritised application areas: Healthcare, Infrastructure Inspection and Maintenance, Agri-Food and Agile Production.

Type of Action: Coordination and support action, Research and Innovation action, Innovation action

Specific Challenge: to lay the foundations for radically new future technologies of any kind from visionary interdisciplinary collaborations that dissolve the traditional boundaries between sciences and disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities. This topic also encourages the driving role of new actors in research and innovation, including excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs and first-time participants to FET under Horizon 2020 from across Europe.

Scope: proposals are sought for cutting-edge high-risk / high-impact interdisciplinary research with all of the following essential characteristics ("FET gatekeepers"):

Radical vision: the project must address a clear and radical vision, enabled by a new technology concept that challenges current paradigms. In particular, research to advance on the roadmap of a well-established technological paradigm, even if high-risk, will not be funded.

Breakthrough technological target: the project must target a novel and ambitious science-to-technology breakthrough as a first proof of concept for its vision. In particular, blue-sky exploratory research without a clear technological objective will not be funded.

Ambitious interdisciplinary research for achieving the technological breakthrough and that opens up new areas of investigation. In particular, projects with only low-risk incremental research, even if interdisciplinary, will not be funded.

The inherently high risks of the research proposed shall be mitigated by a flexible methodology to deal with the considerable science-and-technology uncertainties and for choosing alternative directions and options.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

Scientific and technological contributions to the foundation of a new future technology

Potential for future social or economic impact or market creation.

Building leading research and innovation capacity across Europe by involvement of key actors that can make a difference in the future, for example excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs or first-time participants to FET under Horizon 20204.

Specific Challenge: to lay the foundations for radically new future technologies of any kind from visionary interdisciplinary collaborations that dissolve the traditional boundaries between sciences and disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities. This topic also encourages the driving role of new actors in research and innovation, including excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs and first-time participants to FET under Horizon 2020 from across Europe.

Scope: proposals are sought for cutting-edge high-risk / high-impact interdisciplinary research with all of the following essential characteristics ("FET gatekeepers"):

Radical vision: the project must address a clear and radical vision, enabled by a new technology concept that challenges current paradigms. In particular, research to advance on the roadmap of a well-established technological paradigm, even if high-risk, will not be funded.

Breakthrough technological target: the project must target a novel and ambitious science-to-technology breakthrough as a first proof of concept for its vision. In particular, blue-sky exploratory research without a clear technological objective will not be funded.

Ambitious interdisciplinary research for achieving the technological breakthrough and that opens up new areas of investigation. In particular, projects with only low-risk incremental research, even if interdisciplinary, will not be funded.

The inherently high risks of the research proposed shall be mitigated by a flexible methodology to deal with the considerable science-and-technology uncertainties and for choosing alternative directions and options.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

Scientific and technological contributions to the foundation of a new future technology

Potential for future social or economic impact or market creation.

Building leading research and innovation capacity across Europe by involvement of key actors that can make a difference in the future, for example excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs or first-time participants to FET under Horizon 20204.

Scope: Short individual or collaborative actions focused on the non-scientific aspects and the early stages of turning a result of an ongoing or recently finished project funded through FET under FP7 or Horizon 20206 into a genuine innovation with socio-economic impacts. The precise link with the relevant FET project and the specific result for which a FET Innovation Launchpad proposal is intended, are to be explicitly described in the proposal. This topic does not fund research or activities that are/were already foreseen in the original FET project. Activities proposed should reflect the level of maturity of the result to be taken up. They can include the definition of a commercialisation process, market and competitiveness analysis, technology assessment, verification of innovation potential, consolidation of intellectual property rights, business case development. Proposals can include activities with, for instance, partners for technology transfer, licence-takers, investors and other sources of financing, societal organisations or potential end-users. Limited low-risk technology development (for instance for demonstration, testing or minor adjustment to specific requirements) can be supported as long as it has a clear and necessary role in the broader proposed innovation strategy and plan.The Commission considers that proposals for actions no longer than 18 months and requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 0.1 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately.Expected Impact:

Scope: Short individual or collaborative actions focused on the non-scientific aspects and the early stages of turning a result of an ongoing or recently finished project funded through FET under FP7 or Horizon 20206 into a genuine innovation with socio-economic impacts. The precise link with the relevant FET project and the specific result for which a FET Innovation Launchpad proposal is intended, are to be explicitly described in the proposal. This topic does not fund research or activities that are/were already foreseen in the original FET project. Activities proposed should reflect the level of maturity of the result to be taken up. They can include the definition of a commercialisation process, market and competitiveness analysis, technology assessment, verification of innovation potential, consolidation of intellectual property rights, business case development. Proposals can include activities with, for instance, partners for technology transfer, licence-takers, investors and other sources of financing, societal organisations or potential end-users. Limited low-risk technology development (for instance for demonstration, testing or minor adjustment to specific requirements) can be supported as long as it has a clear and necessary role in the broader proposed innovation strategy and plan.The Commission considers that proposals for actions no longer than 18 months and requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 0.1 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately.Expected Impact:

Specific Challenge: While robots originated in large-scale mass manufacturing, they are now spreading to more and more application areas. In these new settings, robots are often faced with new technical and non-technical challenges. The purpose of this topic is to address such issues in a modular and open way, and reduce the barriers that prevent a more widespread adoption of robots. Four Priority Areas (PAs) are targeted: healthcare, inspection and maintenance of infrastructure, agri-food, and agile production.

User needs, ethical, legal, societal and economic aspects should be addressed in order to raise awareness and take-up by citizens and businesses. Privacy and cybersecurity issues, including security by design and data integrity should also be addressed, where appropriate.

Innovative approaches to hard research problems in relation to applications of robotics in promising new areas are particularly encouraged. Proposals are expected to enable substantially improved solutions to challenging technical issues, with a view of take-up in applications with high socio-economic impact. Driven by application needs, the work can start from research at low TRL, but proposals are expected to validate their results in realistic environments in order to demonstrate the potential for take-up in the selected application(s).

The call is open to all robotics-related research topics and to all new application areas. Excluded are the four priority areas which are already covered elsewhere in this work programme: healthcare, inspection and maintenance of infrastructure, agri-food and agile production. Proposals will be expected to plan efforts to connect and cooperate with the DIHs, Platforms and other relevant activities of this work programme, as appropriate.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between €3 million and €5 million would allow this area to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Establish large-scale pilots capable of demonstrating the use of robotics at scale in actual or highly realistic operating environments; showcase advanced prototype applications built around platforms operating in real or near-real environments and demonstrate high levels of socio-economic impact.

Through large-scale pilots, proposals are expected to make a significant step forward in platform development in the area of infrastructure inspection and maintenance. Starting from suitable reference architectures, platform interfaces are defined, tested via piloting, and supported via ecosystem building preparing their roll-out, and are being evolved over time into standards.

Each proposal is expected to establish large scale pilots. They are expected to: consider utilising existing infrastructure and links to other European, national or private funding-sources; identify the long-term sustainability of the pilot; develop scalable technical solutions capable of meeting performance targets; develop metrics and performance measures for the pilot; engage relevant industry stakeholders, including SMEs, in the provision and operation of the pilot. Proposals will be expected to dedicate resources to disseminate best practice and coordinate access to platforms and demonstrators, in particular in connecting with the Robotics DIHs and Core Technologies actions and other relevant activities, in H2020 and beyond.

Pilots are expected to address both technical and non-technical issues, such as socio-economic impact, novel business models, legal and regulatory, ethical and cyber-security issues and connections to Big Data and IoT.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between €7 million and €9 million would allow this area to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

c) Robotics Competitions

Competitions aims at reducing technical and commercial risks by allowing commercial and technical performance data to be gathered and assessed. They provide a real or near-real operating environment for long-term trials and the testing of deployment strategies.

Proposals (CSA) should address the delivery of challenge-led, robotics competitions focusing on the four application areas prioritised: Healthcare, Infrastructure Inspection and Maintenance, Agri-Food, and Agile Production. Besides the technological objectives, proposals are also expected to stimulate public engagement and engage with the Robotics DIHs. Proposals should address all aspects of running competitions as public events, and engage with the media and public. Proposals should seek to mobilise external partners in sponsoring and setting up the competitions.

Expected Impact: a)

- Strengthening European excellence in Robotics S&T

- Boosting the use of robotics in promising application areas

- Opening up new markets for robotics

- Lowering barriers in the deployment of robotics-based solutions.

b)

- Demonstration of the potential for robotics to impact at scale in the chosen application areas prioritised in this call (infrastructure inspection and maintenance).

- Reduction of technical and commercial risk in the deployment of services based on robotic actors within the selected application area.

- Greater understanding from the application stakeholders of the potential for deploying robotics.

- Demonstration of platforms operating over extended time periods in near realistic environments and promotion of their use.

- Develop the eco-system around the prioritised application areas to stimulate deployment.

- Contribution to the development of open, industry-led or de facto standards

c)

- Greater public exposure to actual robotics capability.

- Greater engagement with competitions from commercial organisations in the four prioritised application areas: Healthcare, Infrastructure Inspection and Maintenance, Agri-Food and Agile Production.

Type of Action: Coordination and support action, Research and Innovation action, Innovation action

Specific Challenge: to lay the foundations for radically new future technologies of any kind from visionary interdisciplinary collaborations that dissolve the traditional boundaries between sciences and disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities. This topic also encourages the driving role of new actors in research and innovation, including excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs and first-time participants to FET under Horizon 2020 from across Europe.

Scope: proposals are sought for cutting-edge high-risk / high-impact interdisciplinary research with all of the following essential characteristics ("FET gatekeepers"):

Radical vision: the project must address a clear and radical vision, enabled by a new technology concept that challenges current paradigms. In particular, research to advance on the roadmap of a well-established technological paradigm, even if high-risk, will not be funded.

Breakthrough technological target: the project must target a novel and ambitious science-to-technology breakthrough as a first proof of concept for its vision. In particular, blue-sky exploratory research without a clear technological objective will not be funded.

Ambitious interdisciplinary research for achieving the technological breakthrough and that opens up new areas of investigation. In particular, projects with only low-risk incremental research, even if interdisciplinary, will not be funded.

The inherently high risks of the research proposed shall be mitigated by a flexible methodology to deal with the considerable science-and-technology uncertainties and for choosing alternative directions and options.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

Scientific and technological contributions to the foundation of a new future technology

Potential for future social or economic impact or market creation.

Building leading research and innovation capacity across Europe by involvement of key actors that can make a difference in the future, for example excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs or first-time participants to FET under Horizon 20204.

Specific Challenge: to lay the foundations for radically new future technologies of any kind from visionary interdisciplinary collaborations that dissolve the traditional boundaries between sciences and disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities. This topic also encourages the driving role of new actors in research and innovation, including excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs and first-time participants to FET under Horizon 2020 from across Europe.

Scope: proposals are sought for cutting-edge high-risk / high-impact interdisciplinary research with all of the following essential characteristics ("FET gatekeepers"):

Radical vision: the project must address a clear and radical vision, enabled by a new technology concept that challenges current paradigms. In particular, research to advance on the roadmap of a well-established technological paradigm, even if high-risk, will not be funded.

Breakthrough technological target: the project must target a novel and ambitious science-to-technology breakthrough as a first proof of concept for its vision. In particular, blue-sky exploratory research without a clear technological objective will not be funded.

Ambitious interdisciplinary research for achieving the technological breakthrough and that opens up new areas of investigation. In particular, projects with only low-risk incremental research, even if interdisciplinary, will not be funded.

The inherently high risks of the research proposed shall be mitigated by a flexible methodology to deal with the considerable science-and-technology uncertainties and for choosing alternative directions and options.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

Scientific and technological contributions to the foundation of a new future technology

Potential for future social or economic impact or market creation.

Building leading research and innovation capacity across Europe by involvement of key actors that can make a difference in the future, for example excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs or first-time participants to FET under Horizon 20204.

Scope: Short individual or collaborative actions focused on the non-scientific aspects and the early stages of turning a result of an ongoing or recently finished project funded through FET under FP7 or Horizon 20206 into a genuine innovation with socio-economic impacts. The precise link with the relevant FET project and the specific result for which a FET Innovation Launchpad proposal is intended, are to be explicitly described in the proposal. This topic does not fund research or activities that are/were already foreseen in the original FET project. Activities proposed should reflect the level of maturity of the result to be taken up. They can include the definition of a commercialisation process, market and competitiveness analysis, technology assessment, verification of innovation potential, consolidation of intellectual property rights, business case development. Proposals can include activities with, for instance, partners for technology transfer, licence-takers, investors and other sources of financing, societal organisations or potential end-users. Limited low-risk technology development (for instance for demonstration, testing or minor adjustment to specific requirements) can be supported as long as it has a clear and necessary role in the broader proposed innovation strategy and plan.The Commission considers that proposals for actions no longer than 18 months and requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 0.1 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately.Expected Impact:

Scope: Short individual or collaborative actions focused on the non-scientific aspects and the early stages of turning a result of an ongoing or recently finished project funded through FET under FP7 or Horizon 20206 into a genuine innovation with socio-economic impacts. The precise link with the relevant FET project and the specific result for which a FET Innovation Launchpad proposal is intended, are to be explicitly described in the proposal. This topic does not fund research or activities that are/were already foreseen in the original FET project. Activities proposed should reflect the level of maturity of the result to be taken up. They can include the definition of a commercialisation process, market and competitiveness analysis, technology assessment, verification of innovation potential, consolidation of intellectual property rights, business case development. Proposals can include activities with, for instance, partners for technology transfer, licence-takers, investors and other sources of financing, societal organisations or potential end-users. Limited low-risk technology development (for instance for demonstration, testing or minor adjustment to specific requirements) can be supported as long as it has a clear and necessary role in the broader proposed innovation strategy and plan.The Commission considers that proposals for actions no longer than 18 months and requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 0.1 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately.Expected Impact:

Stimulating, supporting and rewarding an open and proactive mind-set towards exploitation beyond the research world.

Contributing to the competitiveness of European industry/economy by seeding future growth and the creation of jobs from FET research.

Type of Action: Coordination and support action

Energia << ICT

DT-ICT-11-2019

Big data solutions for energy

d.l. 02-04-2019

Call

H2020-DT-ICT-2019Digitising and transforming European industry and services: digital innovation hubs and platforms

Orçamento

126,00 M€

Specific Challenge: Tomorrow's energy grids consist of heterogeneous interconnected systems, of an increasing number of small-scale and of dispersed energy generation and consumption devices, generating huge amounts of data. The electricity sector, in particular, needs big data tools and architectures for optimized energy system management under these demanding conditions.

Scope: Innovation Actions targeting large-scale pilot test-beds for big data application in the electricity sector. The aim is to develop/pilot and deploy a reference architecture for large-scale multi-party data exchange, management & governance and real-time processing (including distributed/edge processing) in the electricity sector and to translate this reference architecture into an open, modular data analytics toolbox for the safe and effective operation of grids and provision of innovative energy services. The reference architecture should ensure compatibility with legacy formats, interfaces and operating systems of the energy system, allow replication and scale-up, be compliant with applicable EU standards, and should enable the integration of relevant digital technologies like IoT, AI, cloud and big data services. The analytics toolbox shall be able to handle a wide variety of data and support the development of a wide range of energy services, at least to increase the efficiency and reliability of the operation of the electricity network (e.g. by predictive maintenance), to optimize the management of assets connected to the grid (in particular small-scale/renewable electricity generation and those used for demand response), to increase the efficiency and comfort of buildings, and to de-risk investments in energy efficiency (e.g. by reliably predicting and monitoring energy savings). Proposers should demonstrate that they have access to appropriate large-scale and realistic datasets, and should involve as many as necessary of the following types of participants: network operators, suppliers, independent aggregators, ESCO's, power exchanges, building management and renovation sectors, software integrators/developers. Proposals should address, as appropriate, analytics, simulation, prediction, cloud computing. Projects shall collaborate with EU-funded projects through the BRIDGE initiative 72.

For this topic, the four activities and impact criteria described in the introductory section 'Platforms and Pilots' have to be applied.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of around 10 million EUR would allow this area to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

All grants under both subtopics will be subject to Article 30.3 of the grant agreement (Commission right to object to transfers or licensing).

Expected Impact: Proposals should address the following impact criteria, providing metrics to measure success where appropriate:

- Effective integration of relevant digital technologies in the energy sector, resulting in integrated value chains and efficient business processes of the participating organizations;

- Contribution to increasing the use of renewable energy and increased energy efficiency based on optimised energy asset management, offering access to cheaper and sustainable energy for energy consumers and maximising social welfare;

- New data-driven paradigms for energy management systems able to deal with increased complexity of the energy systems;

Specific Challenge: Europe's economic activities and Europe's single market is dependent on well-functioning underlying digital infrastructures, services and data integrity, not the least for critical infrastructures like energy, transport, health, finance, etc. Current security of the digital infrastructures and services will soon be under threat of no longer providing long-term security. Confidentiality of data and communications, authentication, as well as the long-term integrity of stored data have to be guaranteed, even in the advent of quantum computers. Introducing Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) in the underlying infrastructure has the potential to maintain end-to-end security in the long-term.

Scope: Building an experimental platform to test and validate the concept of end-to-end security, providing quantum key distribution as a service. Proposals should develop an open, robust, reliable and fully monitored metropolitan area testbed network (ring or mesh configuration). The aim is to integrate equipment, components, protocols and network technologies with QKD systems and current digital security and communication networks. Where necessary, R&D activities can be addressed. The testbed should be modular, to test different components, configurations and approaches from multiple suppliers and benchmark the different approaches against overall performance. The proposed solutions should demonstrate resistance against known hacking techniques, including quantum hacking techniques. The testbed should make use as much as possible of existing network infrastructure (fibres and/or satellites), provide a quantum key exchange rate compatible with concrete application requirements over metropolitan distances (i.e. of at least 40km). The proposed testbed should demonstrate different applications and use cases of QKD (including for authentication), optimizing end-to-end security rather than the security of individual elements.

Proposals should include an assessment of the applications and parts of the infrastructure for which the integration of QKD is economically justified, as well as an assessment of the minimal acceptable key rate for each application and its total cost of ownership.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 15 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

For grants awarded under this topic the Commission may object to a transfer of ownership or the exclusive licensing of results to a third party established in a third country not associated to Horizon 2020. The respective option of Article 30.3 of the Model Grant Agreement will be applied.

Specific Challenge: The market share of full electric vehicles is still low in many European member states. Several reasons have been identified for this. Charging infrastructure is considered as one of the central reasons when the urban model does not allow for widespread garage availability, or when frequent long range travel is involved. Currently most EV owners have their own garage and live in peri-urban areas.

Innovative solutions need to be evaluated and developed to allow EV drivers to have a similar or even better mobility experience than with conventional fossil fuel vehicles in terms of availability, convenience, performance and costs of the necessary charging infrastructure. At the same time, the infrastructure should not affect the noise environment around them, in order not to create resistance to their installation in urban contexts.

In the longer term, electric roads can be considered for further streamlining the user experience and optimising vehicle design, starting from urban and peri-urban applications such as bus, taxi and LDV lanes, for later extension to extra-urban applications.

The challenge will be to support the accelerated deployment of recharging infrastructure, on one hand a slow charging one for cities with low garage availability, on the other to support occasional ultrafast charging for long range travel. The responsible stakeholders need to be incentivized to take clear steps for a wide availability of charging points and to improve the conditions for a broad market acceptance in the electrification of transport.

Scope: Proposals will have to address all following technical areas including demonstration of the final solutions and their interoperability in multiple cities and TEN-T transnational road links:

•Analysis of subjective perception of charging options and identification of decision influences and concerns of users. The results should provide the basis for strategies or solutions to encourage or incentivize users of different social groups to overcome acceptance barriers in order to accelerate widespread usage of EVs.

•Attractive and convenient charging infrastructure access with connected vehicle systems avoiding waiting times (through for instance, charging facility reservation and scheduling, integration with route planning of multiple vehicles). User preferences like use of renewable energy and avoidance of frequent handling of heavy cables have to be considered. Automated conductive or wireless solutions are expected with highly reliable and interoperable devices. Test methods need to be further optimized, for instance to assess interoperability. Optionally, further extension of the developed stationary wireless charging technology towards urban and periurban "electric road" applications, with the aim of creating an installed base of wireless-ready vehicles to provide the critical mass needed for the deployment of electrified roads at a later stage.

•Transparent, flexible and interconnected payment systems for maximum availability of the charging infrastructure also for drivers who do not regularly use the same car (company/family sharing, commercial car sharing, rental cars, …) or travel across Europe.

•User survey about parking habits, considering for instance how much time is spent at a given location; what type of services are needed or expected during charging; how should the future charging station look like.

•Improvement of the currently deployed or planned superfast charging systems according to the previous survey to convince all car owners of the advantages of electric mobility including a sufficient convenience for long trips. All technical possibilities for optimization, both on the vehicle (like temperature preconditioning), or for energy demand rationalisation (e.g. local renewable power support for solar panels, battery storage for peak shaving and other grid services, demand control by interconnected route management systems for incoming vehicles while taking into account the electricity grid availability and voltage and frequency control constraints in real-time) need to be taken into account.

•Scalable charging infrastructure for ramp-up of expected electric mobility needs in terms of power levels and number of charging posts at one site, adequately managing the impact on the grid.

•Cheap low power DC-Charging for highly efficient connection to future home and office energy systems based on DC-Networks with possibility of V2G by smartening the link between vehicle, charging infrastructure and the grid.

•Low power DC-charging for LEV’s in combination with theft-proof parking for two-wheelers.

•Analysis of market models, regulatory and harmonization recommendations to foster the deployment of EV charging infrastructure in all member states of the EU. Demand control also for slow charging in public or private parking garages shall be enabled by standardized communication to remove barriers of electricity installations in existing apartment blocks and garages considering smart grid implications.

•Development of planning methods to optimize the location of charging sites, taking in consideration user needs and habits (volume of EVs in the area, type of mobility needs, accessibility to charging points, traffic volume, …) as well as time and costs associated to the availability and reinforcement of the necessary electricity network with easy scalability according to the different stages of EV penetration. Analysis and cost effective solutions for specific cases like availability of infrastructure in isolated mountain or seaside locations, or for special events, where high peak demand is associated with short periods of use. Consideration for local storage benefits in the different cases studied.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between EUR 8 and 15 million depending on the level of involved demonstration would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Specific Challenge: Long-distance transport is a main consumer of energy and contributor to CO2 and air pollutant emissions in Europe, and requires specific attention due to very high demand on efficiency, dependability, reliability and cost. This topic considers heavy-duty trucks and bus-coaches in long-distance operation, and the challenge will be to reduce their energy consumption, CO2 ,regulated and non-regulated emissions (to anticipate future legislation and emerging issues such as extremely fine nanoparticles) through multi–technology vehicles operated on a mix of alternative and renewable fuels as well as recuperated heat and regenerated and externally supplied electricity.

Scope: Proposals will have to address all the following technical areas:

•Sub-systems and component concepts including electro-hybrid drives, optimized ICEs and after-treatment systems for alternative and renewable fuels, electric motors, smart auxiliaries, energy storage and power electronics, suitable for real life operation under different mission conditions

•Concepts for connected and digitalized fleet management, predictive maintenance and operation in relation to electrification where appropriate to maximise the emissions reduction potential.

•Implementation of required adaptations in VECTO accordingly to facilitate early take-up of the innovations.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between EUR 20 and 25 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

• The internal combustion engine performance shall be further enhanced to reach a peak thermal efficiency target of 50%

•Reduction of CO2 emissions based on new ICEs optimized (where sufficiently large benefits can be demonstrated) for different combinations using alternative and renewable fuels with additional energy savings using heat recuperation or plug-in hybrid. Emissions with high global warming potential will have to be taken into account in the total CO2 equivalent emissions target and methodologies to introduce such emissions in VECTO devised accordingly.

•A total energy saving, excluding the effect of alternative fuels and plug-in electricity, of at least 10% with respect to the best in class conventional vehicle of 2018 (according to the ongoing monitoring exercise) is targeted at calculated vehicle level VECTO results, validated by propulsion system measurements

•30% reduction of NOx, CO and hydrocarbons in an extended range of environmental conditions

Specific Challenge: Climate change, energy security and local air pollution are some of the key questions for the 21st century. Urban areas in developing and emerging countries are major driving factors in growing global energy demand and Greenhouse Gas emissions.

Although cities cover only 2% of the earth's surface, 50% of the world’s population lives in cities, but they are responsible for three-quarters of the global energy consumption as well as approximately 80% of the global greenhouse gas emissions. While the trend towards urbanisation and the associated increase of personal and freight transport creates massive challenges, in particular in developing and emerging economies, it also offers the unique opportunity to shape energy use especially in the transport and urban form towards a low carbon pathway. Moving towards sustainable mobility will also help addressing urban congestion, access to jobs and public services, and local air pollution.

This is why urbanisation requires integrated mobility solutions that bring together technology opportunities with local and national policy, including land use and mobility planning. Efficient transport and mobility, based on a balanced mix of public and private transport and dependent on the characteristics of each city, is and will continue to be the backbone of cities’ growth and competitiveness.

Whereas environmental issues are very high on urban mobility agendas, the importance of transport in urban social and economic structures is often neglected in discussions. All three aspects of urban sustainability must be treated with equal importance and have to be examined in parallel.

Scope: Actions should bring together European, Asian (e.g. China), CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) and African research partners, government agencies and urban authorities, private sector and civil society with relevant expertise and competence within the corresponding cooperation framework and foster participatory engagement in urban electrification in order to reduce air pollution and CO2 emissions. All types of vehicle are considered under this topic (powered 2 wheelers, cars, buses, trucks and LDV).

Proposals should address all of the following activities:

• Development of a toolbox for advanced management strategies towards a more efficient private and public electric mobility: E-mobility management strategies, focusing on smart deployment and operation of vehicles, in particular electrified vehicle, to increase mobility and energy efficiency, emission reduction and user acceptance of electrified vehicles

o Deployment and operation of infrastructure use charging infrastructure (conventional and wireless) and network, availability of parking places. Adaptation and integration of existing/ adapted vehicles of different types if necessary.

o Efficient integration of the operations of different electrified road public transport, from e-bike to bus rapid transit ( e- BRT) including mini-buses, taxi and mobility services on demand through smart navigation and routing, coordinated traffic management, demand-responsive service and dispatching

• Comparative demonstrations activities and pilots in cities in Europe, Asia, African and/or CELAC countries: Innovative concepts for electrified road public transport (passenger and freight), jointly designed through International Partnerships as a contribution to a wider sustainable mobility concept, from the perspective of a seamless mobility, taking in account the acceptance of users (travellers or freight operator). Comparative demonstrations activities and pilots (in European and Chinese’s Cities, African, CELAC countries) of such jointly designed concepts developed by local partners.

• Implementation concepts to scale up the demonstration activities. Evaluation of the relative outputs and accordingly the development of implementation concepts to scale up the demonstration activities and exploration of the sustainable mobility planning in the city transformation process :

o Sustainable planning of city and transportation infrastructure: link city planning with policy discussion and implementation solutions and city goals and with any Air Quality Plans

o Dedicated plans for financing solutions, including public and private operations.

o Regional and international replication conditions to reach out to a larger number of cities and countries

Cooperation and synergies with ongoing activities undertaken with international initiatives such as Decarbonising Transport (International Transport Forum) and the Urban Electric Mobility Initiative (UN-Habitat) and other joint initiatives of European Member States international cooperation initiatives and the European Commission (e.g. Mobilise Your City) should be sought where appropriate.

In line with the strategy for EU international cooperation in research and innovation , international cooperation is encouraged.

Applicants are invited to read the eligibility and admissibility conditions for this topic.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU in the range of EUR 15 and 18 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact: Proposals are expected to contribute to:

• Capability to quantify the potential reduction of greenhouse gas and pollutant emissions as well as traffic congestion, by demonstrating improvements that can be achieved with new urban mobility systems and electrification, for each stakeholder in the value chain (in line with the objectives set by the COP21 and the New Urban Agenda)

• Reference models of the mobility system to provide a basis in order to assess the ability to replicate sustainable concepts by demonstrating the short- and long-term benefit for the stakeholders involved, and especially considering the relevant boundary conditions (i.e infrastructure, vehicle, usage needs and patterns, governance, financing schemes, urban organisation, etc) and how the result contributes to key EU policy goals ( including climate goals and competitiveness of European industry

• A basis for strengthening the collaboration of the European Union with Asia (e.g. China, India, etc), Latin America (CELAC) and Africa, which also offers both a common starting point for common future legislative efforts, as well a favourable setting for new business opportunities for innovative local and European entrepreneurs.

This action is part of the Aviation International Cooperation Flagship called "Safer and Greener Aviation in a Smaller World" mentioned in the introduction to this work programme 2018-2020.

The third challenge of Flightpath 2050 is related to environmental protection and the security of energy supply. At the Paris climate conference (COP21), countries agreed to limit climate change to well below 2°C. Without considerable contributions from the aviation sector to global mitigation efforts, this goal cannot be achieved. Carbon Neutral Growth from 2020 is possible through a combination of non-market and market measures. Regarding aircraft technologies, there is growing evidence that indicates that for airframe as well as for Propulsion and Power Systems (PPS), the projected cumulative impact of developed technologies will fall short of the year 2035 target. These projections account for the latest developments in airframe, weight gains from more-electric aircraft systems as well as advanced gas-turbines, such as expected high thermal efficiencies through intercooling and recuperation and propulsive efficiencies from Open Rotor.

Against this background it is necessary to develop future aviation propulsion and integration technologies with emphasis on hybrid-electric and full-electric propulsion. There is also a need for establishing a common roadmap and prioritize the key enabling technologies for the hybrid/electric configurations, including energy storage (batteries), for the aviation sector.

Scope:

Proposals are expected to address feasibility design studies for aircraft energy system with integrated hybrid/electric propulsion and power generation architectures as well as sub-systems enablers in the context of appropriately projected advances in the next twenty-year framework. Each proposal may aim at several of the following areas:

•Development of tools for tightly-coupled inter-disciplinary new architectural feasibility assessment for the hybrid/electric propulsion and power systems, including detailed feasibility design studies for innovative energy distribution, use and storage solutions.

•Explore concepts on energy harvesting technologies to identifying, capturing, storing and re-using energy in flight and/or during take-off, landing, breaking and taxiing, which have potential to offer synergies with hybrid-electric architectures.

•Explore emerging storage technologies that have potential to comply with aerospace requirements (e.g. performances, safety, dispatch…) for hybrid/electric propulsion and power systems.

•Advance further Electro-Magnetic Interference solutions as well as thermal management trade-offs at system level.

Projects are expected to perform an assessment on the applicability, availability and upgrade of research infrastructures for testing and validation with focus on electrical and propulsion benches and computational tools. (incl. wind tunnels, electrical and propulsion benches and computational tools). Projects are also expected to develop updated roadmap with reference to key enabling technologies towards fully electric or hybrid-electric aircraft and explore new relevant regulatory frameworks.

The implementation of the proposed areas of this topic should cover TRLs ranging from 1 to 4.

In line with the strategy for EU international cooperation in research and innovation , multilateral international cooperation is encouraged, in particular with countries such as Japan and Canada.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between EUR 3 and 5 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

Overall, the topic is expected to contribute to Flightpath 2050 goals, namely towards “environmental protection and the security of energy supply” as well as “maintaining global leadership”. Specific impact is expected in the following areas:

•New paradigm shift towards emission-free aviation.

•Strengthen the medium and long-term European aeronautics competitiveness.

•Engagement of European aviation research community to a highly ambitious topic.

Increasingly strict emission standards apply to shipping around the coastlines of many developed countries. Presently these are mainly focussed on SOx, but in future, reflecting health concerns, increasingly strict limits are likely to address NOx and particulate matter. A variety of compliant solutions can meet present, and may be able to meet emerging and future standards. However, some of these solutions may lead to secondary impacts and new waste streams. The principal challenge is to better understand the comprehensive environmental impacts from the wide scale adoption of a range of potential emission reduction solutions together with any secondary effects on the on the marine environment. As well as building upon current state of the art modelling (e.g by IIASA and EMSA ), appropriate Earth Observation data and information provided by the Copernicus programme and its Marine Environmental Monitoring Service maybe taken into consideration.

Scope:

To address these challenges, proposals should address all of the following aspects:

• Assess the range of emission reduction technologies and designs which may be deployed, consider their cost benefits.

• Considering several possible scenarios for the wide scale adoption of different emission control technologies depending on fuel costs, availabilities service needs etc model the disbursement of to the marine environment around the European coastline. Modelling should consider the main shipping routes, use real ship traffic, hydrological and weather data and the variety of constituents discharged. Consideration should be given to vulnerable regions such as estuaries and enclosed waters.

• For the scenarios modelled assess the environmental impact on the marine environment in the medium and long term including consideration of any potential bio accumulation.

In line with the Union’s strategy for international cooperation in research and innovation, international cooperation is encouraged. The participation of civil society is also encouraged.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a budget from the EU of up to EUR 8 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

For a variety of likely emission reduction scenarios, activities will provide comprehensive information concerning the predicted dispersion of discharges from shipping and any long term environmental impact. Identify the most effected locations. Provide a sound science basis for future policy decisions at local, national, European and international levels. Provide a valuable open data and modelling resource. Facilitate cooperation between industry and environmental scientists. Contribute to UN's Sustainable Development Goals 13 Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources and the target to prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds.

Specific Challenge: to lay the foundations for radically new future technologies of any kind from visionary interdisciplinary collaborations that dissolve the traditional boundaries between sciences and disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities. This topic also encourages the driving role of new actors in research and innovation, including excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs and first-time participants to FET under Horizon 2020 from across Europe.

Scope: proposals are sought for cutting-edge high-risk / high-impact interdisciplinary research with all of the following essential characteristics ("FET gatekeepers"):

Radical vision: the project must address a clear and radical vision, enabled by a new technology concept that challenges current paradigms. In particular, research to advance on the roadmap of a well-established technological paradigm, even if high-risk, will not be funded.

Breakthrough technological target: the project must target a novel and ambitious science-to-technology breakthrough as a first proof of concept for its vision. In particular, blue-sky exploratory research without a clear technological objective will not be funded.

Ambitious interdisciplinary research for achieving the technological breakthrough and that opens up new areas of investigation. In particular, projects with only low-risk incremental research, even if interdisciplinary, will not be funded.

The inherently high risks of the research proposed shall be mitigated by a flexible methodology to deal with the considerable science-and-technology uncertainties and for choosing alternative directions and options.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

Scientific and technological contributions to the foundation of a new future technology

Potential for future social or economic impact or market creation.

Building leading research and innovation capacity across Europe by involvement of key actors that can make a difference in the future, for example excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs or first-time participants to FET under Horizon 20204.

Specific Challenge: to lay the foundations for radically new future technologies of any kind from visionary interdisciplinary collaborations that dissolve the traditional boundaries between sciences and disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities. This topic also encourages the driving role of new actors in research and innovation, including excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs and first-time participants to FET under Horizon 2020 from across Europe.

Scope: proposals are sought for cutting-edge high-risk / high-impact interdisciplinary research with all of the following essential characteristics ("FET gatekeepers"):

Radical vision: the project must address a clear and radical vision, enabled by a new technology concept that challenges current paradigms. In particular, research to advance on the roadmap of a well-established technological paradigm, even if high-risk, will not be funded.

Breakthrough technological target: the project must target a novel and ambitious science-to-technology breakthrough as a first proof of concept for its vision. In particular, blue-sky exploratory research without a clear technological objective will not be funded.

Ambitious interdisciplinary research for achieving the technological breakthrough and that opens up new areas of investigation. In particular, projects with only low-risk incremental research, even if interdisciplinary, will not be funded.

The inherently high risks of the research proposed shall be mitigated by a flexible methodology to deal with the considerable science-and-technology uncertainties and for choosing alternative directions and options.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

Scientific and technological contributions to the foundation of a new future technology

Potential for future social or economic impact or market creation.

Building leading research and innovation capacity across Europe by involvement of key actors that can make a difference in the future, for example excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs or first-time participants to FET under Horizon 20204.

Scope: Short individual or collaborative actions focused on the non-scientific aspects and the early stages of turning a result of an ongoing or recently finished project funded through FET under FP7 or Horizon 20206 into a genuine innovation with socio-economic impacts. The precise link with the relevant FET project and the specific result for which a FET Innovation Launchpad proposal is intended, are to be explicitly described in the proposal. This topic does not fund research or activities that are/were already foreseen in the original FET project. Activities proposed should reflect the level of maturity of the result to be taken up. They can include the definition of a commercialisation process, market and competitiveness analysis, technology assessment, verification of innovation potential, consolidation of intellectual property rights, business case development. Proposals can include activities with, for instance, partners for technology transfer, licence-takers, investors and other sources of financing, societal organisations or potential end-users. Limited low-risk technology development (for instance for demonstration, testing or minor adjustment to specific requirements) can be supported as long as it has a clear and necessary role in the broader proposed innovation strategy and plan.The Commission considers that proposals for actions no longer than 18 months and requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 0.1 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately.Expected Impact:

Scope: Short individual or collaborative actions focused on the non-scientific aspects and the early stages of turning a result of an ongoing or recently finished project funded through FET under FP7 or Horizon 20206 into a genuine innovation with socio-economic impacts. The precise link with the relevant FET project and the specific result for which a FET Innovation Launchpad proposal is intended, are to be explicitly described in the proposal. This topic does not fund research or activities that are/were already foreseen in the original FET project. Activities proposed should reflect the level of maturity of the result to be taken up. They can include the definition of a commercialisation process, market and competitiveness analysis, technology assessment, verification of innovation potential, consolidation of intellectual property rights, business case development. Proposals can include activities with, for instance, partners for technology transfer, licence-takers, investors and other sources of financing, societal organisations or potential end-users. Limited low-risk technology development (for instance for demonstration, testing or minor adjustment to specific requirements) can be supported as long as it has a clear and necessary role in the broader proposed innovation strategy and plan.The Commission considers that proposals for actions no longer than 18 months and requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 0.1 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately.Expected Impact:

Stimulating, supporting and rewarding an open and proactive mind-set towards exploitation beyond the research world.

Contributing to the competitiveness of European industry/economy by seeding future growth and the creation of jobs from FET research.

Type of Action: Coordination and support action

Transportes << ICT

SU-ICT-04-2019

Quantum Key Distribution testbed

d.l. 19-11-2019

Call

H2020-SU-ICT-2019Cybersecurity

Orçamento

84,00 M€

Specific Challenge: Europe's economic activities and Europe's single market is dependent on well-functioning underlying digital infrastructures, services and data integrity, not the least for critical infrastructures like energy, transport, health, finance, etc. Current security of the digital infrastructures and services will soon be under threat of no longer providing long-term security. Confidentiality of data and communications, authentication, as well as the long-term integrity of stored data have to be guaranteed, even in the advent of quantum computers. Introducing Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) in the underlying infrastructure has the potential to maintain end-to-end security in the long-term.

Scope: Building an experimental platform to test and validate the concept of end-to-end security, providing quantum key distribution as a service. Proposals should develop an open, robust, reliable and fully monitored metropolitan area testbed network (ring or mesh configuration). The aim is to integrate equipment, components, protocols and network technologies with QKD systems and current digital security and communication networks. Where necessary, R&D activities can be addressed. The testbed should be modular, to test different components, configurations and approaches from multiple suppliers and benchmark the different approaches against overall performance. The proposed solutions should demonstrate resistance against known hacking techniques, including quantum hacking techniques. The testbed should make use as much as possible of existing network infrastructure (fibres and/or satellites), provide a quantum key exchange rate compatible with concrete application requirements over metropolitan distances (i.e. of at least 40km). The proposed testbed should demonstrate different applications and use cases of QKD (including for authentication), optimizing end-to-end security rather than the security of individual elements.

Proposals should include an assessment of the applications and parts of the infrastructure for which the integration of QKD is economically justified, as well as an assessment of the minimal acceptable key rate for each application and its total cost of ownership.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 15 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

For grants awarded under this topic the Commission may object to a transfer of ownership or the exclusive licensing of results to a third party established in a third country not associated to Horizon 2020. The respective option of Article 30.3 of the Model Grant Agreement will be applied.

Specific Challenge: Decarbonising the aviation and shipping transport sectors, which are expanding fast and increasing the overall fossil fuel consumption, relies on biofuel and renewable fuels. The specific challenge is to increase the competitiveness of next generation biofuel and renewable fuel technologies in aviation and shipping, compared to fossil fuel alternatives.

•liquid jet-like biofuels and alternative renewable fuels from biogenic residues and wastes through chemical, biochemical and thermochemical pathways, or a combination of them; and

•bunker fuel-like biofuels for shipping uses.

Proposals are expected to bring the technology from TRL 3 to 5 (please see part G of the General Annexes).

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 3 to 5 million would allow this challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact: The supported projects are expected to reduce costs and improve performance of renewable fuels for aviation and shipping regarding the efficiency, the environment and society. The proposed solution is expected to contribute to achieving European leadership in this area.

Specific Challenge: to lay the foundations for radically new future technologies of any kind from visionary interdisciplinary collaborations that dissolve the traditional boundaries between sciences and disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities. This topic also encourages the driving role of new actors in research and innovation, including excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs and first-time participants to FET under Horizon 2020 from across Europe.

Scope: proposals are sought for cutting-edge high-risk / high-impact interdisciplinary research with all of the following essential characteristics ("FET gatekeepers"):

Radical vision: the project must address a clear and radical vision, enabled by a new technology concept that challenges current paradigms. In particular, research to advance on the roadmap of a well-established technological paradigm, even if high-risk, will not be funded.

Breakthrough technological target: the project must target a novel and ambitious science-to-technology breakthrough as a first proof of concept for its vision. In particular, blue-sky exploratory research without a clear technological objective will not be funded.

Ambitious interdisciplinary research for achieving the technological breakthrough and that opens up new areas of investigation. In particular, projects with only low-risk incremental research, even if interdisciplinary, will not be funded.

The inherently high risks of the research proposed shall be mitigated by a flexible methodology to deal with the considerable science-and-technology uncertainties and for choosing alternative directions and options.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

Scientific and technological contributions to the foundation of a new future technology

Potential for future social or economic impact or market creation.

Building leading research and innovation capacity across Europe by involvement of key actors that can make a difference in the future, for example excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs or first-time participants to FET under Horizon 20204.

Specific Challenge: to lay the foundations for radically new future technologies of any kind from visionary interdisciplinary collaborations that dissolve the traditional boundaries between sciences and disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities. This topic also encourages the driving role of new actors in research and innovation, including excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs and first-time participants to FET under Horizon 2020 from across Europe.

Scope: proposals are sought for cutting-edge high-risk / high-impact interdisciplinary research with all of the following essential characteristics ("FET gatekeepers"):

Radical vision: the project must address a clear and radical vision, enabled by a new technology concept that challenges current paradigms. In particular, research to advance on the roadmap of a well-established technological paradigm, even if high-risk, will not be funded.

Breakthrough technological target: the project must target a novel and ambitious science-to-technology breakthrough as a first proof of concept for its vision. In particular, blue-sky exploratory research without a clear technological objective will not be funded.

Ambitious interdisciplinary research for achieving the technological breakthrough and that opens up new areas of investigation. In particular, projects with only low-risk incremental research, even if interdisciplinary, will not be funded.

The inherently high risks of the research proposed shall be mitigated by a flexible methodology to deal with the considerable science-and-technology uncertainties and for choosing alternative directions and options.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

Scientific and technological contributions to the foundation of a new future technology

Potential for future social or economic impact or market creation.

Building leading research and innovation capacity across Europe by involvement of key actors that can make a difference in the future, for example excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs or first-time participants to FET under Horizon 20204.

Scope: Short individual or collaborative actions focused on the non-scientific aspects and the early stages of turning a result of an ongoing or recently finished project funded through FET under FP7 or Horizon 20206 into a genuine innovation with socio-economic impacts. The precise link with the relevant FET project and the specific result for which a FET Innovation Launchpad proposal is intended, are to be explicitly described in the proposal. This topic does not fund research or activities that are/were already foreseen in the original FET project. Activities proposed should reflect the level of maturity of the result to be taken up. They can include the definition of a commercialisation process, market and competitiveness analysis, technology assessment, verification of innovation potential, consolidation of intellectual property rights, business case development. Proposals can include activities with, for instance, partners for technology transfer, licence-takers, investors and other sources of financing, societal organisations or potential end-users. Limited low-risk technology development (for instance for demonstration, testing or minor adjustment to specific requirements) can be supported as long as it has a clear and necessary role in the broader proposed innovation strategy and plan.The Commission considers that proposals for actions no longer than 18 months and requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 0.1 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately.Expected Impact:

Scope: Short individual or collaborative actions focused on the non-scientific aspects and the early stages of turning a result of an ongoing or recently finished project funded through FET under FP7 or Horizon 20206 into a genuine innovation with socio-economic impacts. The precise link with the relevant FET project and the specific result for which a FET Innovation Launchpad proposal is intended, are to be explicitly described in the proposal. This topic does not fund research or activities that are/were already foreseen in the original FET project. Activities proposed should reflect the level of maturity of the result to be taken up. They can include the definition of a commercialisation process, market and competitiveness analysis, technology assessment, verification of innovation potential, consolidation of intellectual property rights, business case development. Proposals can include activities with, for instance, partners for technology transfer, licence-takers, investors and other sources of financing, societal organisations or potential end-users. Limited low-risk technology development (for instance for demonstration, testing or minor adjustment to specific requirements) can be supported as long as it has a clear and necessary role in the broader proposed innovation strategy and plan.The Commission considers that proposals for actions no longer than 18 months and requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 0.1 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately.Expected Impact:

Specific Challenge: Nanotechnology research has led to a remarkable development of nanoscale materials in bulk form with unique properties. Several of these materials are in the market or are expected to enter the market in the near future. The challenge is to establish industrial scale manufacturing of functional systems based on manufactured nanoparticles with designed properties for use in semiconductors, energy harvesting and storage, waste heat recovery, medicine, etc. This action will therefore establish synergy between EU stakeholders (research laboratories, industry, SMEs, etc.) active in this domain and to identify and resolve common challenges.

Scope:

 Establish a network of EU stakeholders that will manage information and communication among its members in the technical domains such as nano-synthesis, nanofabrication, nanostructuring, additive nanomanufacturing, nanostructure assembly, roll-to-roll nanofabrication, etc.;

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of around EUR 2 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

 Integrate nanoscale building blocks into complex, large scale systems that will become the basis for a new European high-value industry;

 Link and consolidate existing infrastructure, create a sustainable community of stakeholders managing information and communication within and outside the group and develop an EU wide research and innovation strategy;

 Establish a network of existing EU funded projects and initiatives, which will solve common issues through cross-project collaboration, and will strengthen technology takeup across Europe;

 Establish international cooperation in particular with the nanomanufacturing programme of USA-NSF and the NNI Signature initiative of Sustainable Nanomanufacturing.

Type of Action: Coordination and support action

Ação Climática << Saúde

SC1-BHC-28-2019

The Human Exposome Project: a toolbox for assessing and addressing the impact of environment on health

Decoding the role of the environment, including climate change, for health and well-being

Specific Challenge: Despite the general acknowledgement by the scientific community that 'Genetics load the gun but environment pulls the trigger' when it comes to the causation of major non-communicable diseases (NCDs) , there is persistent uncertainty as to the global burden of disease attributable to environmental (including life-style and climatic) factors, including healthcare costs and negative economic impact. Deciphering the human exposome is a novel way of addressing the challenge to improve health and reduce the overall burden of disease. This will require improved knowledge of health risks, including combinations of several risk factors, and the mechanisms by which they affect health at different stages throughout the life course, including exposures in foetal life. Effective preventive action will need to be designed, building on knowledge of various risk factors, including exposure to pollutants in daily life, individual behaviour and the social context, taking into account gender issues.

Developing a Human Exposome Project would present a fundamental shift in looking at health, by moving research away from ‘one exposure, one disease’ understanding to a more complex picture upon which to build solid, cost-effective preventive actions and policies in the future. It would respond to the need for more complete and accurate individual-level exposure data in order to estimate the largely unknown environmental component of NCDs.

Scope: Applicants should take advantage of the last decade's rapid technological advances which have opened up new opportunities to collect, combine and analyse large data sets offering new possibilities to understand the contribution of environmental factors to the global health burden of common chronic diseases. Proposals should use innovative approaches to the systematic and agnostic identification of the most important environmental risk factors for the development of major NCDs across the life course (including in utero), leading to preventive interventions at the individual, group or population level and contribute to sustainable healthcare. Well-designed retrospective epidemiological studies may be included and proposals may envisage the creation of a prospective Europe-wide exposomics cohort and biobank, integrating behavioural, socio-economic factors and clinical records.

The following components should be considered: agnostic evaluation of the role of multiple and unknown exposures; assessment of individual exposure to multiple stressors; sensors that combine external exposure and health data measurements; integration of external exposome data with cross-omics responses and (epi)genetic data; systematic evaluation and simulations of the health impacts; socio-economic modelling and econometric analysis including ethical and sex/gender aspects where relevant; better data mining tools, including advanced statistical analysis of complex data and high-performance/high throughput computing and storage; a long-term host and a single shared data infrastructure, taking into account existing structures and ensuring open access to data generated.

Innovation and connections with industry are expected in the areas of sensor development (external exposome), omics technology and novel biomarker development (internal exposome), bioinformatics, and data processing and management. Proposals are expected to respond to a persistent or long-standing policy/regulatory need where the exposome approach would be useful to solve a scientific issue to underpin better regulation now or in the future (examples: indoor and outdoor air quality, waste, occupational health, noise).

In order to establish an overarching Human Exposome Project, an overall coordination mechanism between the projects funded will be required and will be added at the grant preparation stage to all selected proposals as a common work package. Grants awarded under this topic will be complementary. The respective options of Article 2, Article 31.6 and Article 41.4 of the Model Grant Agreement will be applied.

The Commission considers that a proposal requesting an EU contribution between EUR 8 to 12 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

•Innovation in environmental health sciences, in particular for external and internal exposure assessments and data management.

•Enabling researchers and policy makers to continuously include new knowledge in the policy making processes by using the toolbox to generate data and information.

•Better prediction of disease risk by acquisition of new knowledge on the influence of external exposures on biological pathways at different life-stages and identification of early signs of health damage caused by environmental factors.

Type of Action: Research and Innovation action

Ação Climática << Energia

LC-SC3-CC-3-2019

Support for the opening of low-carbon energy research databases in Europe

Specific Challenge: Recent advances in the collection and exploitation of large data sets open the possibility for major industrial and social innovations. The European Open Science Cloud initiative aims to maximise the incentives for sharing data and to increase the capacity to exploit them, to ensure that data can be used as widely as possible.

Increasing aspects of research in the transition to a low-carbon energy system in Europe rely on the collection, analysis and processing of large data sets. Insights, information and knowledge are increasingly extracted from data sets in individual sectors and in the combination of data from different sectors.

The challenge is to promote the opening of research databases for low-carbon energy in Europe, and to support a European-level approach to defining the development of future research data bases; this action focuses on the area of low-carbon energy. As the energy transition combines different scientific disciplines, particular attention has to be paid to agreed metadata in order to allow for the joint exploitation of data from these disciplines.

Scope: Proposals will develop together with energy research communities several of the items below:

•Development and use of data management practices that follow findable, accessible, interoperable, re-usable (FAIR) principles, and to the validation of data quality measures;

•Coordination of existing data repositories and databases, including those from SETIS and from the IEA;

•Access to tools to manage energy data with FAIR principles; promotion of open source access of such tools;

•Access to analytics to exploit energy data; promotion of open source access of such tools;

•Capacity building of data experts for the domain of low-carbon energy research;

•New research topics based on the analysis of large data sets in the energy domain;

•Trans-disciplinary research combining data from different domains and at different scales;

•Development of partnerships with industry to promote the opening of large datasets of interest to foster research into future technologies and services.

A broad coverage of the issues mentioned above is encouraged.

Recommendations that will be produced by the ongoing study on "Opportunities and barriers for opening of research databases in low-carbon energy research" should be taken into account .

Proposals should also follow developments of the European Open Science Cloud initiative, and plan to cooperate with and complement this activity.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 0.5 and 1 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

•Increasing/extending/widening the use of low-carbon energy research databases, particularly those from publicly financed R&I projects.

•Development of a critical mass of open research databases in Europe, and of researchers equipped with the know-how for the deployment, maintenance and exploitation of these.

•Easy and open access to these databases and to tools for their elaboration and exploitation, leading to increased efficiency of research investments.

•Strengthening of data-intensive research on low-carbon energy in Europe;

•Strengthening the development of industrial applications of data-intensive processes.

Specific Challenge: CCUS in industrial applications faces significant challenges due to its high cost and the fierce international competition in the sectors concerned. However, these sectors currently account for 20% of global CO2 emissions, and in the 2 degree scenario, should represent half of the stored CO2 by 2050. Relevant sectors with high CO2 emissions are for example steel, iron and cement making, oil refining, gas processing, hydrogen production, biofuel production and waste incineration plants.

Scope: Projects will focus on integrating CO2 capture in industrial installations, whilst addressing the full CCUS chain. Projects will elaborate a detailed plan on how to use the results, i.e. the subsequent transport, utilisation and/or underground storage of the captured CO2. Important aspects to address are of technical (e.g. the optimised integration of capture plant with industrial processes; scalability; CO2 purity), safety (e.g. during transportation and storage), financial (e.g. cost of capture; cost of integration) and strategic nature (e.g. business models; operation and logistics of industrial clusters and networks).

Projects are expected to bring technologies to TRL 6-7 (please see part G of the General Annexes). Technology development has to be balanced by an assessment of the societal readiness towards the proposed innovations. Relevant end users and societal stakeholders will be identified in the proposal, and their concerns and needs will be analysed during the project using appropriate techniques and methods from the social sciences and humanities, in order to create awareness, gain feedback on societal impact and advancing society’s readiness for the proposed solutions. Projects should also explore the socio-economic and political barriers to acceptance and awareness with a view to regulatory or policy initiatives.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU in the range of EUR 10 to 12 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

In line with the strategy for EU international cooperation in research and innovation (COM(2012)497), international cooperation is encouraged, in particular with relevant Mission Innovation countries such as China .

Expected Impact: Successful, safe and economic demonstration of integrated-chain CCUS from relevant industrial sources such as mentioned in the specific challenge will accelerate the learning, drive down the cost and thus help break the link between economic growth and the demand for industrial output on one hand, and increasing CO2 emissions on the other hand. The impact of projects under this call will to a large extent be determined by the extent to which the results will be exploited, i.e. the plan on how the captured CO2 will be actually utilised and/or stored, either in the project or planned as a future phase. This will be evaluated based on the maturity and quality of the proposed post-capture solutions. Projects under this call that are carried out in areas where there is both a high concentration of CO2 emitting industries and a nearby capacity for geological storage are considered prime sites for hub and cluster developments, and will generate the highest impact on full-scale deployment in the medium to longer term.

Type of Action: Innovation action

LC-SC3-EE-1-2018-2019-2020

Decarbonisation of the EU building stock: innovative approaches and affordable solutions changing the market for buildings renovation

Specific Challenge: The market for deep renovation of buildings needs to be transformed in terms of technologies, processes and business models. The multiple benefits of improved energy efficiency are well known, but more action is needed for Europe to achieve the higher rates of renovation that would reduce energy use and decarbonize the building stock in order to meet long-term climate and energy targets. In particular, deep renovations need to become more attractive to all relevant stakeholders, more reliable in terms of performance, less disruptive for occupants (especially in residential buildings), less time-consuming, less energy-intensive from a life cycle perspective, more environmentally friendly regarding applied materials and more cost-effective. There is a need to demonstrate and roll out holistic consumer-centred solutions that involve the whole value chain, ensuring high levels of comfort and a high quality of the indoor environment.

Scope: Proposals should demonstrate solutions addressing building fabric and/or technical systems that ensure faster and more cost-effective deep renovations that result in high energy performance. Proposals should include innovations in technology and in design and construction methods with low embodied energy and on-site works organisation, industrialization and lowering cost of energy retrofitting and they should take into account any architectural constraints. They should also include innovations in business models and the holistic integration of disciplines across the value chain. Proposals should also consider energy efficient and low carbon solutions to retrofit building-level heating and cooling systems and the integration of on-site renewable energy generation , energy storage systems which allow for optimisation and flexible consumption, and, if relevant, integration with district heating and cooling systems. Proposals could address drivers of building renovation that go beyond a desire to reduce energy consumption and related energy costs. For example, decisions to renovate may sometimes coincide with structural repairs. They could also consider further development and improvement of hybrid energy systems using fossil fuel based heating systems coupled with RES based heating systems as well as the integration of highly-efficient buildings and local energy system solutions such as District Heating and Cooling, including hybrid solutions.

Solutions should include quick and simple installation of components and systems, minimizing disruption for building occupants and the time spent on site. Proposals should include monitoring and displaying of real time energy performance and other relevant data and consider the ways in which consumers and others could access and make use of such information. Solutions should ensure high levels of occupant comfort (thermal, visual and acoustic) and indoor environmental quality (e.g. air quality, humidity) if possible based on bio-based materials, as well as low risk of moisture-related problems, summer overheating and other harmful unintended consequences, and should address the multiple benefits of energy efficiency. Proposals should demonstrate solutions that aim for large scale roll-out according to defined business models and financial schemes for owners.

Projects are expected to bring the technology to TRL level 8-9 (please see part G of the General Annexes).

This topic contributes to the roadmap of the Energy-efficient Buildings (EeB) cPPP.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 3 and 4 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

•Investments in sustainable energy triggered by the project (in million Euro);

•High energy performance in the renovated buildings;

•Measurable cost reduction compared with a typical renovation (i.e. a renovation that meets current minimum requirements of existing building regulations) or major energy performance improvement at comparable cost;

•Reduction of time needed on site for renovation works by 20% compared to current national standard practice;

•Demonstration of the effectiveness and replicability of the proposed solutions to lead to an increased rate of renovation for defined building typologies in several districts/cities/regions.

Additional positive effects can be quantified and reported when relevant and wherever possible:

This action is part of the Aviation International Cooperation Flagship called "Safer and Greener Aviation in a Smaller World" mentioned in the introduction to this work programme 2018-2020.

Aviation alters the composition of the atmosphere globally, thus can potentially contribute to anthropogenic climate change and ozone depletion. The last major international assessment of these impacts was made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1999. In addition to CO2, the climate impact of aviation is strongly influenced by non-CO2 emissions, such as nitrogen oxides, influencing ozone and methane, and water vapour, which can lead to the formation of persistent contrails in ice-supersaturated regions.

Beyond the perennial challenge in developing new technologies that can minimize the impact in the medium and longer term, the main objective of this action is expected to address mitigation strategies that will minimise those negative effects by aviation on climate in the short-medium term and are relevant for greener flight trajectories and operations.

Scope:

The proposals may aim at one or more of the following areas:

A.Advance further the international state-of-the-art, through better scientific understanding of aviation emissions with high degree of uncertainty and high estimated impact to climate change, in order to enable greener flight operations.

D.Propose and evaluate mitigation strategies based on the use of alternative jet fuel pathways that have been approved under or intended to apply for the ASTM D7566 approval standard. A detailed Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) approach needs to be included taking into account the following key elements: proper co-product allocation methodology, system boundaries, attributional vs consequential LCA and uncertainties from the time horizon, the potential of Green House Gases (GHGs) reduction and economic implications. Regarding the feedstocks, the impact of indirect land-use change (ILUC) on GHGs emissions must also be taken into account and addressed.

Proposals are expected to address the need to design and implement international measurement campaigns, in order to contribute to better climate metric assessments and more reliable physical and climate models.

This action does not address new aircraft technologies on structures, systems, engines nor their integration, towards minimising the impact in the medium and longer term. The projects are expected to formulate specific recommendations for stakeholders on flight planning and on the use of alternative fuels.

In line with the strategy for EU international cooperation in research and innovation (COM(2012)497), international cooperation is encouraged. In particular bilateral international cooperation with China is encouraged for areas C and D with the aim at promoting substantial coordinated and balanced research and innovation cooperation between the EU and China. Proposals under those research areas C and D are encouraged to have an appropriate balance in terms of effort and/or number of partners between the EU and China. China-based participants have the possibility to apply for funding under the Chinese co-funding mechanism and other Chinese sources.

Although the association of TRL to better understanding aviation emissions is not uniquely defined, the implementation of the proposed topic may cover TRL spectrum from 2 to 4.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between EUR 2 and 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

The topic aims to deliver scientifically founded and globally harmonised policy, regulations and operational improvements to support climate-friendly flight operations. Expected impacts are:

•International measurement campaigns and international validation of physical and climate models.

•Operational improvements in support to achieve the collective medium term global aspirational goal of keeping the global net CO2 emissions from international aviation from 2020 at the same level (so-called "carbon neutral growth from 2020").

•Enhanced role of the Union in International Organisations and multilateral fora as well as strengthened implementation, governance, monitoring and evaluation.

•Collaboration and sharing expertise on operational improvements and global market-based measures with EU and National aviation and environment research programmes.

•Contribution to UN's Sustainable Development Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.

Increasingly strict emission standards apply to shipping around the coastlines of many developed countries. Presently these are mainly focussed on SOx, but in future, reflecting health concerns, increasingly strict limits are likely to address NOx and particulate matter. A variety of compliant solutions can meet present, and may be able to meet emerging and future standards. However, some of these solutions may lead to secondary impacts and new waste streams. The principal challenge is to better understand the comprehensive environmental impacts from the wide scale adoption of a range of potential emission reduction solutions together with any secondary effects on the on the marine environment. As well as building upon current state of the art modelling (e.g by IIASA and EMSA ), appropriate Earth Observation data and information provided by the Copernicus programme and its Marine Environmental Monitoring Service maybe taken into consideration.

Scope:

To address these challenges, proposals should address all of the following aspects:

• Assess the range of emission reduction technologies and designs which may be deployed, consider their cost benefits.

• Considering several possible scenarios for the wide scale adoption of different emission control technologies depending on fuel costs, availabilities service needs etc model the disbursement of to the marine environment around the European coastline. Modelling should consider the main shipping routes, use real ship traffic, hydrological and weather data and the variety of constituents discharged. Consideration should be given to vulnerable regions such as estuaries and enclosed waters.

• For the scenarios modelled assess the environmental impact on the marine environment in the medium and long term including consideration of any potential bio accumulation.

In line with the Union’s strategy for international cooperation in research and innovation, international cooperation is encouraged. The participation of civil society is also encouraged.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a budget from the EU of up to EUR 8 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

For a variety of likely emission reduction scenarios, activities will provide comprehensive information concerning the predicted dispersion of discharges from shipping and any long term environmental impact. Identify the most effected locations. Provide a sound science basis for future policy decisions at local, national, European and international levels. Provide a valuable open data and modelling resource. Facilitate cooperation between industry and environmental scientists. Contribute to UN's Sustainable Development Goals 13 Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources and the target to prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds.

Specific Challenge: to lay the foundations for radically new future technologies of any kind from visionary interdisciplinary collaborations that dissolve the traditional boundaries between sciences and disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities. This topic also encourages the driving role of new actors in research and innovation, including excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs and first-time participants to FET under Horizon 2020 from across Europe.

Scope: proposals are sought for cutting-edge high-risk / high-impact interdisciplinary research with all of the following essential characteristics ("FET gatekeepers"):

Radical vision: the project must address a clear and radical vision, enabled by a new technology concept that challenges current paradigms. In particular, research to advance on the roadmap of a well-established technological paradigm, even if high-risk, will not be funded.

Breakthrough technological target: the project must target a novel and ambitious science-to-technology breakthrough as a first proof of concept for its vision. In particular, blue-sky exploratory research without a clear technological objective will not be funded.

Ambitious interdisciplinary research for achieving the technological breakthrough and that opens up new areas of investigation. In particular, projects with only low-risk incremental research, even if interdisciplinary, will not be funded.

The inherently high risks of the research proposed shall be mitigated by a flexible methodology to deal with the considerable science-and-technology uncertainties and for choosing alternative directions and options.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

Scientific and technological contributions to the foundation of a new future technology

Potential for future social or economic impact or market creation.

Building leading research and innovation capacity across Europe by involvement of key actors that can make a difference in the future, for example excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs or first-time participants to FET under Horizon 20204.

Specific Challenge: to lay the foundations for radically new future technologies of any kind from visionary interdisciplinary collaborations that dissolve the traditional boundaries between sciences and disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities. This topic also encourages the driving role of new actors in research and innovation, including excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs and first-time participants to FET under Horizon 2020 from across Europe.

Scope: proposals are sought for cutting-edge high-risk / high-impact interdisciplinary research with all of the following essential characteristics ("FET gatekeepers"):

Radical vision: the project must address a clear and radical vision, enabled by a new technology concept that challenges current paradigms. In particular, research to advance on the roadmap of a well-established technological paradigm, even if high-risk, will not be funded.

Breakthrough technological target: the project must target a novel and ambitious science-to-technology breakthrough as a first proof of concept for its vision. In particular, blue-sky exploratory research without a clear technological objective will not be funded.

Ambitious interdisciplinary research for achieving the technological breakthrough and that opens up new areas of investigation. In particular, projects with only low-risk incremental research, even if interdisciplinary, will not be funded.

The inherently high risks of the research proposed shall be mitigated by a flexible methodology to deal with the considerable science-and-technology uncertainties and for choosing alternative directions and options.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

Scientific and technological contributions to the foundation of a new future technology

Potential for future social or economic impact or market creation.

Building leading research and innovation capacity across Europe by involvement of key actors that can make a difference in the future, for example excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs or first-time participants to FET under Horizon 20204.

Scope: Short individual or collaborative actions focused on the non-scientific aspects and the early stages of turning a result of an ongoing or recently finished project funded through FET under FP7 or Horizon 20206 into a genuine innovation with socio-economic impacts. The precise link with the relevant FET project and the specific result for which a FET Innovation Launchpad proposal is intended, are to be explicitly described in the proposal. This topic does not fund research or activities that are/were already foreseen in the original FET project. Activities proposed should reflect the level of maturity of the result to be taken up. They can include the definition of a commercialisation process, market and competitiveness analysis, technology assessment, verification of innovation potential, consolidation of intellectual property rights, business case development. Proposals can include activities with, for instance, partners for technology transfer, licence-takers, investors and other sources of financing, societal organisations or potential end-users. Limited low-risk technology development (for instance for demonstration, testing or minor adjustment to specific requirements) can be supported as long as it has a clear and necessary role in the broader proposed innovation strategy and plan.The Commission considers that proposals for actions no longer than 18 months and requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 0.1 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately.Expected Impact:

Scope: Short individual or collaborative actions focused on the non-scientific aspects and the early stages of turning a result of an ongoing or recently finished project funded through FET under FP7 or Horizon 20206 into a genuine innovation with socio-economic impacts. The precise link with the relevant FET project and the specific result for which a FET Innovation Launchpad proposal is intended, are to be explicitly described in the proposal. This topic does not fund research or activities that are/were already foreseen in the original FET project. Activities proposed should reflect the level of maturity of the result to be taken up. They can include the definition of a commercialisation process, market and competitiveness analysis, technology assessment, verification of innovation potential, consolidation of intellectual property rights, business case development. Proposals can include activities with, for instance, partners for technology transfer, licence-takers, investors and other sources of financing, societal organisations or potential end-users. Limited low-risk technology development (for instance for demonstration, testing or minor adjustment to specific requirements) can be supported as long as it has a clear and necessary role in the broader proposed innovation strategy and plan.The Commission considers that proposals for actions no longer than 18 months and requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 0.1 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately.Expected Impact:

Specific Challenge: The global market for plastics continues to grow due to their physical properties and benefits such as light weight, reduction of food waste, durability and cost. After being used, plastics should be separated in order to be subject to the most appropriate waste treatment processes. This is increasingly difficult and inefficient due to, for example, consumers' inaccurate identification of the appropriate types of plastics for recycling. Other plastic types, such as polystyrene, can even not be recycled if they have traces of food.

Despite the worldwide efforts for degradation or recycling, large amounts of mixtures of plastics and other polymers end up in landfills or are used for the generation of energy. These methods lead to environmental contamination through the production of CO2 or due to plastics reaching water courses and the sea where they persist and become toxic for the whole food chain. Novel biotechnological approaches should be applied for the sustainable biological degradation of mixtures of recalcitrant and degradable plastics.

Scope: Proposals will develop environmentally friendly and sustainable solutions for managing the waste of plastics mixtures based on the use of communities of microorganisms with a set of complementary enzymes. The enzymes may be native or engineered using state of the art biotechnologies. The microbial organisms will turn plastic mixtures into chemical constituents facilitating mineralisation, composting of otherwise recalcitrant and toxic polymers and facilitating production of high value products. Polymers such as polystyrene can also be included in the proposals.

Proposals should:

 produce cocktails of enzymes using communities of microorganisms capable of degrading mixtures of biodegradable and currently non-biodegradable plastics into more basic chemical constituents;

 use a multidisciplinary approach based on biotechnology;

 create high value products and valorise mixed plastic waste.

This topic is part of the EU-China flagship initiative on Biotechnology for Environment and Human Health, which will promote substantial coordinated and balanced research and Innovation cooperation between the EU and China. China-based participants have the possibility to apply for funding under the Chinese co-funding mechanism and other Chinese sources15.

Activities should start at TRL 3 and achieve TRL 5 at the end of the project.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU up to EUR 5 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

 A combination of microorganisms expressing at least three novel or improved enzymatic activities enabling the degradation of mixtures of plastics;

 Degradation of at least 20 percent of non-biodegradable plastics found in plastic mixtures. The objective is to include relevant indicators that prove this impact;

 Identification of the metabolic pathways leading to at least two high added value products that could be sustainably produced in future from plastic mixtures;

 Description of a sustainable and environmentally friendly pilot system for the degradation of plastic mixtures.

Relevant indicators and metrics, with baseline values, should be clearly stated in the proposal.

Specific Challenge: Every citizen, from all walks of life, should be able to fully take part in the Digital Single Market. This means that the Next Generation Internet will have to empower users, including its most vulnerable or disabled one, to have access to the same digital learning opportunities, in forms that are accessible, perceivable and understandable by everybody.

Scope: The objective is to support actions on smarter, open, trusted and personalised learning solutions to optimise digital learning and to allow learners to engage and interact with content and with peers.

a. Innovation Action: Digital Learning Incubator

The objective of this action is to advance personalised and inclusive digital learning through a fast-paced adoption cycle of technological and methodological solutions. The work will build on cross-links and advances in the various NGI technologies (such as machine-learning, AR/VR, AI) research fields and foster synergies between all the relevant market players, researchers and educational agents working on promising and innovative products. The action will be based on a "push and pull" strategy whereby the research actors push the best research projects to enter the innovation cycle and the market actors pull for the ideas with best market traction.

The action will:

- set up an Incubator bringing together all relevant stakeholders to form strategic alliances that can jointly achieve fast-paced breakthroughs in the area of personalised and inclusive learning online. The Incubator will allow fast-track experimentations in form of small scale projects, providing access to knowledge, research prototypes, learning resources and data to parties interested to conduct these experimentations.

- launch open calls for highly promising small scale projects to work on a topic/challenge set out in a roadmap. It shall foresee suitable arrangements for oragnizing the corresponding competitive evaluation and selection.

The action shall select these small scale projects through the use of financial support to third parties. Up to 90% of the EU funding of the action should be allocated to the financial support of these third parties, typically of the size of EUR 100 000 to 200 000 per third party45 and a duration of about 9 to 12 months. Financial support to third parties should in line with the conditions set out in Part K of the General Annexes.

The Commission considers that up to 1 proposal requesting a contribution from the EU of around 7 million would allow this area to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

b) Coordination and support action in the area of Digital Learning

The action will:

- stimulate the collaboration between all EU-funded FP7 and H2020 projects on digital learning, analyse the outcomes and best practices carried out in these projects, support the dissemination of their results as well as ensure their integration within the Next Generation Initiative and link with other support measures.

- identify: a) emerging research challenges, notably those arising from digital certification of learning outcomes and blockchain technologies and their uptake for a more inclusive and personalised learning; b) address legal, organisational and technological challenges underpinning the uptake of the proposed solutions, notably in relation to their scalability; c) make policy recommendations in view of the priorities of the next programme for research, innovation and deployment.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of around 1 million would allow this area to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

- Increase in the overall uptake of technology for personalised and inclusive learning for all, regardless of their age, gender or other socioeconomic factors.

- Increase in the number of distributed learning solutions for children with special educational needs.

- Increase in the number of start-ups/SME's deploying personalised and inclusive learning solutions to the market.

Type of Action: Innovation action, Coordination and support action

Sociedades << Energia

LC-SC3-CC-1-2018-2019-2020

Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) aspects of the Clean-Energy Transition

Specific Challenge: The clean-energy transition doesn't just pose technological and scientific challenges; it also requires a better understanding of cross-cutting issues related to socioeconomic, gender, sociocultural, and socio-political issues. Addressing these issues will help to devise more effective ways of involving citizens and to better understand energy-related views and attitudes, ultimately leading to greater social acceptability as well as more durable governance arrangements and socioeconomic benefits.

Scope: In 2018, proposals should be submitted under the theme "Social innovation in the energy sector" and in 2019 under the theme "Challenges facing carbon-intensive regions". They should address one or several of the questions listed under the respective sub-topics below. All proposals should adopt a comparative perspective, with case studies or data from at least three European Union Member States or Associated Countries.

2018:

Social innovation in the energy sector: The energy transition has given rise to various forms of social innovation, such as the emergence of energy cooperatives or that of energy "prosumers" consuming but also producing energy. Urban areas have emerged as major hubs for these trends, given the close proximity between citizens, businesses and institutions, facilitating linkages between sectors and the emergence of new business and service models, as well as associated governance arrangements. These issues need to be studied in more detail, with a particular focus on the following questions:

•What characterizes successful examples of social innovation in the energy sector?

•What enabling conditions facilitate social innovation in the energy sector and how can it be encouraged? What factors work against it?

•In what way does social innovation contribute to the preservation of livelihoods and the development of new business and service models in the energy sector?

•In what way does social innovation contribute to making energy more secure, sustainable and affordable? Does social innovation lead to greater competitiveness and if so, how?

•Under what conditions does social innovation lead to greater acceptance of the transition towards a low-carbon energy system?

2019:

Challenges facing carbon-intensive regions: The transition to a low-carbon energy system and economy poses particular challenges for regions that are still heavily dependent on fossil-fuel-based industries or the extraction of fossil fuels themselves ("coal and carbon-intensive regions"). At the same time, this transition offers major opportunities for developing new lines of business and for increasing the competitiveness of structurally weak regions. Focusing on the past 5-10 years up to the present, particular attention should be focused on the following issues:

•What are the principal socio-economic challenges facing coal and carbon-intensive regions today and what effect have these had on livelihoods and the sustainability of local and regional economies?

•What coping strategies have emerged in recent years? What are the principal differences between regions that are coping well and those that are not?

•To what extent have coal and carbon-intensive regions experienced outward migration in recent years and in what way has this affected their social and demographic composition?

•What effect, if any, have these changes had on the rise of populism and of anti-democratic attitudes in the regions concerned?

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 1 and 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact: The proposed research will:

•provide a better understanding of socioeconomic, gender, sociocultural, and socio-political factors and their interrelations with technological, regulatory, and investment-related aspects, in support of the goals of the Energy Union and particularly its research and innovation pillar;

•yield practical recommendations for using the potential of social innovation to further the goals of the Energy Union, namely, to make Europe's energy system more secure, sustainable, competitive, and affordable for Europe's citizens;

•yield practical recommendations for addressing the challenges of the clean-energy transition for Europe's coal and carbon-intensive regions, including socioeconomic and political ones.

Specific Challenge: to lay the foundations for radically new future technologies of any kind from visionary interdisciplinary collaborations that dissolve the traditional boundaries between sciences and disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities. This topic also encourages the driving role of new actors in research and innovation, including excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs and first-time participants to FET under Horizon 2020 from across Europe.

Scope: proposals are sought for cutting-edge high-risk / high-impact interdisciplinary research with all of the following essential characteristics ("FET gatekeepers"):

Radical vision: the project must address a clear and radical vision, enabled by a new technology concept that challenges current paradigms. In particular, research to advance on the roadmap of a well-established technological paradigm, even if high-risk, will not be funded.

Breakthrough technological target: the project must target a novel and ambitious science-to-technology breakthrough as a first proof of concept for its vision. In particular, blue-sky exploratory research without a clear technological objective will not be funded.

Ambitious interdisciplinary research for achieving the technological breakthrough and that opens up new areas of investigation. In particular, projects with only low-risk incremental research, even if interdisciplinary, will not be funded.

The inherently high risks of the research proposed shall be mitigated by a flexible methodology to deal with the considerable science-and-technology uncertainties and for choosing alternative directions and options.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

Scientific and technological contributions to the foundation of a new future technology

Potential for future social or economic impact or market creation.

Building leading research and innovation capacity across Europe by involvement of key actors that can make a difference in the future, for example excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs or first-time participants to FET under Horizon 20204.

Specific Challenge: to lay the foundations for radically new future technologies of any kind from visionary interdisciplinary collaborations that dissolve the traditional boundaries between sciences and disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities. This topic also encourages the driving role of new actors in research and innovation, including excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs and first-time participants to FET under Horizon 2020 from across Europe.

Scope: proposals are sought for cutting-edge high-risk / high-impact interdisciplinary research with all of the following essential characteristics ("FET gatekeepers"):

Radical vision: the project must address a clear and radical vision, enabled by a new technology concept that challenges current paradigms. In particular, research to advance on the roadmap of a well-established technological paradigm, even if high-risk, will not be funded.

Breakthrough technological target: the project must target a novel and ambitious science-to-technology breakthrough as a first proof of concept for its vision. In particular, blue-sky exploratory research without a clear technological objective will not be funded.

Ambitious interdisciplinary research for achieving the technological breakthrough and that opens up new areas of investigation. In particular, projects with only low-risk incremental research, even if interdisciplinary, will not be funded.

The inherently high risks of the research proposed shall be mitigated by a flexible methodology to deal with the considerable science-and-technology uncertainties and for choosing alternative directions and options.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

Scientific and technological contributions to the foundation of a new future technology

Potential for future social or economic impact or market creation.

Building leading research and innovation capacity across Europe by involvement of key actors that can make a difference in the future, for example excellent young researchers, ambitious high-tech SMEs or first-time participants to FET under Horizon 20204.

Scope: Short individual or collaborative actions focused on the non-scientific aspects and the early stages of turning a result of an ongoing or recently finished project funded through FET under FP7 or Horizon 20206 into a genuine innovation with socio-economic impacts. The precise link with the relevant FET project and the specific result for which a FET Innovation Launchpad proposal is intended, are to be explicitly described in the proposal. This topic does not fund research or activities that are/were already foreseen in the original FET project. Activities proposed should reflect the level of maturity of the result to be taken up. They can include the definition of a commercialisation process, market and competitiveness analysis, technology assessment, verification of innovation potential, consolidation of intellectual property rights, business case development. Proposals can include activities with, for instance, partners for technology transfer, licence-takers, investors and other sources of financing, societal organisations or potential end-users. Limited low-risk technology development (for instance for demonstration, testing or minor adjustment to specific requirements) can be supported as long as it has a clear and necessary role in the broader proposed innovation strategy and plan.The Commission considers that proposals for actions no longer than 18 months and requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 0.1 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately.Expected Impact:

Scope: Short individual or collaborative actions focused on the non-scientific aspects and the early stages of turning a result of an ongoing or recently finished project funded through FET under FP7 or Horizon 20206 into a genuine innovation with socio-economic impacts. The precise link with the relevant FET project and the specific result for which a FET Innovation Launchpad proposal is intended, are to be explicitly described in the proposal. This topic does not fund research or activities that are/were already foreseen in the original FET project. Activities proposed should reflect the level of maturity of the result to be taken up. They can include the definition of a commercialisation process, market and competitiveness analysis, technology assessment, verification of innovation potential, consolidation of intellectual property rights, business case development. Proposals can include activities with, for instance, partners for technology transfer, licence-takers, investors and other sources of financing, societal organisations or potential end-users. Limited low-risk technology development (for instance for demonstration, testing or minor adjustment to specific requirements) can be supported as long as it has a clear and necessary role in the broader proposed innovation strategy and plan.The Commission considers that proposals for actions no longer than 18 months and requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 0.1 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately.Expected Impact:

Specific Challenge: As addressed in the multi-annual roadmap7 of the FoF cPPP, physically-entangled systems used in manufacturing environments have some specific requirements in terms of reliability and security, which are now challenged by the need for manufacturing facilities to be digitally connected with external partners in the value chain. While free flow of data is a primary requirement for digitisation of industry, it poses significant challenges in terms of data security, which cannot be solved easily because the factory of the future must exchange digital information with the outside world just like raw materials and components. There is a need to develop practically usable solutions which can guarantee an adequate level of security without limiting the capability to exchange data and information both on the manufacturing floor and beyond the factory.

Scope: Proposals need to develop tools and services guaranteeing an adequate level of data security for digital collaboration between manufacturing environments and value chains. Solutions need to be practically usable in real manufacturing facilities, taking into account the operational requirements needed for factory usage in real-world conditions, including reliability and resilience. Issues of threat detection and implementation of countermeasures should be addressed, as well as evolution and real-time response when needed. Semi-autonomous or fully autonomous solutions, requiring little or no local supervision are encouraged.

Proposals will target TRL 5 to 7, and will include at least one use case which will demonstrate measurable and significant improvements over state of the art tools and methods under real-world conditions. The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 4 and 6 million would allow this area to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact: Take-up by industry of practically usable solutions which guarantee significantly increased cyber-security levels in daily operations for manufacturing facilities and other actors in the value chains.

Specific Challenge: While robots originated in large-scale mass manufacturing, they are now spreading to more and more application areas. In these new settings, robots are often faced with new technical and non-technical challenges. The purpose of this topic is to address such issues in a modular and open way, and reduce the barriers that prevent a more widespread adoption of robots. Four Priority Areas (PAs) are targeted: healthcare, inspection and maintenance of infrastructure, agri-food, and agile production.

User needs, ethical, legal, societal and economic aspects should be addressed in order to raise awareness and take-up by citizens and businesses. Privacy and cybersecurity issues, including security by design and data integrity should also be addressed, where appropriate.

Innovative approaches to hard research problems in relation to applications of robotics in promising new areas are particularly encouraged. Proposals are expected to enable substantially improved solutions to challenging technical issues, with a view of take-up in applications with high socio-economic impact. Driven by application needs, the work can start from research at low TRL, but proposals are expected to validate their results in realistic environments in order to demonstrate the potential for take-up in the selected application(s).

The call is open to all robotics-related research topics and to all new application areas. Excluded are the four priority areas which are already covered elsewhere in this work programme: healthcare, inspection and maintenance of infrastructure, agri-food and agile production. Proposals will be expected to plan efforts to connect and cooperate with the DIHs, Platforms and other relevant activities of this work programme, as appropriate.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between €3 million and €5 million would allow this area to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Establish large-scale pilots capable of demonstrating the use of robotics at scale in actual or highly realistic operating environments; showcase advanced prototype applications built around platforms operating in real or near-real environments and demonstrate high levels of socio-economic impact.

Through large-scale pilots, proposals are expected to make a significant step forward in platform development in the area of infrastructure inspection and maintenance. Starting from suitable reference architectures, platform interfaces are defined, tested via piloting, and supported via ecosystem building preparing their roll-out, and are being evolved over time into standards.

Each proposal is expected to establish large scale pilots. They are expected to: consider utilising existing infrastructure and links to other European, national or private funding-sources; identify the long-term sustainability of the pilot; develop scalable technical solutions capable of meeting performance targets; develop metrics and performance measures for the pilot; engage relevant industry stakeholders, including SMEs, in the provision and operation of the pilot. Proposals will be expected to dedicate resources to disseminate best practice and coordinate access to platforms and demonstrators, in particular in connecting with the Robotics DIHs and Core Technologies actions and other relevant activities, in H2020 and beyond.

Pilots are expected to address both technical and non-technical issues, such as socio-economic impact, novel business models, legal and regulatory, ethical and cyber-security issues and connections to Big Data and IoT.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between €7 million and €9 million would allow this area to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

c) Robotics Competitions

Competitions aims at reducing technical and commercial risks by allowing commercial and technical performance data to be gathered and assessed. They provide a real or near-real operating environment for long-term trials and the testing of deployment strategies.

Proposals (CSA) should address the delivery of challenge-led, robotics competitions focusing on the four application areas prioritised: Healthcare, Infrastructure Inspection and Maintenance, Agri-Food, and Agile Production. Besides the technological objectives, proposals are also expected to stimulate public engagement and engage with the Robotics DIHs. Proposals should address all aspects of running competitions as public events, and engage with the media and public. Proposals should seek to mobilise external partners in sponsoring and setting up the competitions.

Expected Impact: a)

- Strengthening European excellence in Robotics S&T

- Boosting the use of robotics in promising application areas

- Opening up new markets for robotics

- Lowering barriers in the deployment of robotics-based solutions.

b)

- Demonstration of the potential for robotics to impact at scale in the chosen application areas prioritised in this call (infrastructure inspection and maintenance).

- Reduction of technical and commercial risk in the deployment of services based on robotic actors within the selected application area.

- Greater understanding from the application stakeholders of the potential for deploying robotics.

- Demonstration of platforms operating over extended time periods in near realistic environments and promotion of their use.

- Develop the eco-system around the prioritised application areas to stimulate deployment.

- Contribution to the development of open, industry-led or de facto standards

c)

- Greater public exposure to actual robotics capability.

- Greater engagement with competitions from commercial organisations in the four prioritised application areas: Healthcare, Infrastructure Inspection and Maintenance, Agri-Food and Agile Production.

Type of Action: Coordination and support action, Research and Innovation action, Innovation action

SU-ICT-02-2020

Building blocks for resilience in evolving ICT systems

d.l. 19-11-2019

Call

H2020-SU-ICT-2019Cybersecurity

Orçamento

84,00 M€

Specific Challenge: Algorithms, software and hardware systems must be designed having security, privacy, data protection and accountability in mind from their design phase in a measurable manner. Relevant challenges include: (a) to develop mechanisms that measure the performance of ICT systems with regards to cybersecurity and privacy and (b) to enhance control and trust of the consumer of digital products and services with innovative tools aiming to ensure the accountability of the security and privacy levels in the algorithms, in the software, and ultimately in the ICT systems, products and services across the supply chain.

Scope: Proposals are invited against at least one of the following three subtopics:

a) Cybersecurity/privacy audit, certification and standardisation

Innovative approaches to (i) design and develop automated security validation and testing, exploiting the knowledge of architecture, code, and development environments (e.g. white box) (ii) design and develop automated security verification at code level, focusing on scalable taint analysis, information-flow analysis, control-flow integrity, security policy, and considering the relation to secure development lifecycles, (iii) develop mechanisms, key performance indicators and measures that ease the process of certification at the level of services and (iv) develop mechanisms to better audit and analyse open source and/or open license software, and ICT systems with respect to cybersecurity and digital privacy.

For each of the sub-topics above, the outcome of the proposals is expected to lead to development up to Technology Readiness level (TRL) 5.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 4 and 5 million would allow this area to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

For grants awarded under this topic for Research and Innovation Action the Commission or Agency may object to a transfer of ownership or the exclusive licensing of results to a third party established in a third country not associated to Horizon 2020. The respective option of Article 30.3 of the Model Grant Agreement will be applied.

- Increased trust both by developers using/integrating the ICT components and by the end-users of IT systems and services.

- Protect the privacy of citizens and trustworthiness of ICT .

- Acceleration of the development and implementation of certification processes.

Long term

- Advanced cybersecurity products and services will be developed improving trust in the Digital Single Market.

- The use of more harmonized certification schemes will increase the business cases for cybersecurity services as they will become more reliable.

- Validation platforms will provide assessments with less effort compared with nowadays and assure a better compliance with relevant regulations and standards.

Type of Action: Research and Innovation action

SU-ICT-04-2019

Quantum Key Distribution testbed

d.l. 19-11-2019

Call

H2020-SU-ICT-2019Cybersecurity

Orçamento

84,00 M€

Specific Challenge: Europe's economic activities and Europe's single market is dependent on well-functioning underlying digital infrastructures, services and data integrity, not the least for critical infrastructures like energy, transport, health, finance, etc. Current security of the digital infrastructures and services will soon be under threat of no longer providing long-term security. Confidentiality of data and communications, authentication, as well as the long-term integrity of stored data have to be guaranteed, even in the advent of quantum computers. Introducing Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) in the underlying infrastructure has the potential to maintain end-to-end security in the long-term.

Scope: Building an experimental platform to test and validate the concept of end-to-end security, providing quantum key distribution as a service. Proposals should develop an open, robust, reliable and fully monitored metropolitan area testbed network (ring or mesh configuration). The aim is to integrate equipment, components, protocols and network technologies with QKD systems and current digital security and communication networks. Where necessary, R&D activities can be addressed. The testbed should be modular, to test different components, configurations and approaches from multiple suppliers and benchmark the different approaches against overall performance. The proposed solutions should demonstrate resistance against known hacking techniques, including quantum hacking techniques. The testbed should make use as much as possible of existing network infrastructure (fibres and/or satellites), provide a quantum key exchange rate compatible with concrete application requirements over metropolitan distances (i.e. of at least 40km). The proposed testbed should demonstrate different applications and use cases of QKD (including for authentication), optimizing end-to-end security rather than the security of individual elements.

Proposals should include an assessment of the applications and parts of the infrastructure for which the integration of QKD is economically justified, as well as an assessment of the minimal acceptable key rate for each application and its total cost of ownership.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 15 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

For grants awarded under this topic the Commission may object to a transfer of ownership or the exclusive licensing of results to a third party established in a third country not associated to Horizon 2020. The respective option of Article 30.3 of the Model Grant Agreement will be applied.